Killer Instinct (Instinct #2)
by James Patternson
So, I’ll be honest with everyone….Killer Instinct was not my favorite read by James Patterson. This book is the second installment of Patterson’s Instinct series that follows Psychologist Dylan Reinhart and his detective partner Elizabeth Needham as they go through hunting down and catching different types of criminals together. First they hunt down and defeat a copycat serial killer in book 1 and in Killer Instinct they are on a race against time to track down and apprehend another serial killer AND terrorist group that’s tormenting New York City.
Reinhart and Needham have a magnetic dynamic that really brings the reader into the story as you can’t help fall in love with their tenacity, wit, strength, and of course their biting sarcasm. Though what really makes them a power duo is their ability to read each others mind and finish each other sentences as they track down and outsmart several criminals in an uncanny “we’ve been married for decades” kind of way even though they haven’t been friends for long, vigilante heroes for even shorter.
Their dynamic is really what helped me power through the second book in the Instinct series, because the overall plot and themes within this book were less than I personally desired….the main plot consists of stopping a terrorist group and their multitudes of attack(s) on NYC before its too late.
However the book feels a bit icky with some of the middle eastern rhetoric it chooses to displays and the association with the 9/11 attack that happened in real life….in NYC makes this book feel a bit xenophobic and/or racist towards middle eastern individuals (which is the type of rhetoric that ran rampant in the U.S. after 9/11 and is still embedded in our country til this today). Obviously this specific book focuses on different terrorist attacks, so I wasn’t going in truly blind, I was just hoping that a writer of Patterson’s “caliber” would’ve wrote a more engaging book, and I maybe had higher hopes since the main character is advertised as gay, that the overall story would be a bit more socially/politically aware but I guess that was a bit too much to ask for from a white male writer whose getting up their in age.
This leads me to my second critique of this series. Dr. Reinhart is gay. Canonically gay, has a husband gay, has adopted a young child (from Africa no less - big sigh - ) with their gay husband; gay. In the first book his husband was briefly mentioned and his interactions with other women in the story has him read as your typical straight male, and I was hoping the second book would have more gay inclusion, especially considering the main character is queer. I was sorely disappointed while reading the second book, because it felt almost immediately something happened between Dr. Reinhart and Tracy (his husband’s name) that caused Tracy to take their young daughter and stay out of NYC for the entirety of the book and not coming back until their was only like three to five pages left in the book. While his husband is away there are no visible identifiers that Dr.Reinhart is even attracted to men, let alone married to one with a child. There are several points and comments that he’ll make about women’s appearances and even Needham’s beauty, while ALSO pretending to be straight to go out with a potential suspect for the case they’re working. IF you didn’t know any better you would assume Reinhart is a typical straight man and that’s my biggest critique of this book and series…why is this quote unquote gay man whose married, always commenting on women’s looks and their attractiveness? Why are there never small comments on men’s attractiveness? Why are there barely any interactions romantic, platonic, or otherwise with his literal husband? Why is the majority of the banter and dynamic between Reinhart and Needham, unneedlessly flirty? Why even create a main character whose gay if its not even going to be a part of the book, apart of his story? It really feels like they coped out to bring in queer readers, but didn’t take the time to actually create a queer character with queer storylines, but instead wrote him as a straight man and just said he was gay at the end. Boooo, boring.
I’m unsure if I’ll continue with this series, the second book really put me off from the whole thing, but if I do, I’ll definitely be leaving a review, but whatever my rant for now is over.
Favorite Quote: “There is no such thing as absolute certainty, but there is assurance sufficient for the purposes of human life.”
2.5/5 stars
smiles,
fablouis