Escape: One killer. Five victims. Who will be next? (A Black Book Thriller 3)

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Following a few key leads, Harney and his partner travel to a rural home, where they hope to find the girls and solve the case with little issue.

He is the creator of unforgettable characters and series, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Effing Smith, and Maximum Ride, and of breathtaking true stories about the Kennedys, John Lennon, and Princess Diana, as well as our military heroes, police officers, and ER nurses. When five teenage girls are abducted, Chicago PD Detective Billy Harney leads the investigation to find them.He is the creator of unforgettable characters and series, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Effing Smith, and Maximum Ride, and of breathtaking true stories about the Kennedys, John Lennon, and Princess Diana, as well as our military heroes, police officers, and ER nurses. Hard-working and honest to a fault, he cannot be bought but is willing to circumvent procedures and policies that he believes would prevent justice from being administered. The narrative flow works well for this piece, which has moments of greatness and others that link two larger plot lines together. One that involves being the lead for a task force focused on a major gang bust, taking down Jericho Hooper, the leader of the Imperial Gangster Nation, the biggest and most powerful street gang in Chicago. The big kicker is that the mystery was well thought out, had multiple layers, and even more important (for those of us who confidently feel that we can figure out the guilty party before he/she is revealed), the outcome was surprising and extremely well-delivered!

As Chicago PD’s special-ops leader, Detective Billy Harney knows well that money is not the only valuable currency.

Now, in 2022, Patterson and Ellis have brought back Harney for a third thriller, changing the book type title lingo to “Escape” and setting up Detective Harney’s hunt for a child kidnapper. Ellis, who served as legal counsel to the Illinois legislature, garnered public attention for leading the impeachment proceedings against former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. But there are more villains added to the mix as Billy juggles more cases and I wasn't into the rest of the story. While there are quite a few stereotypes here, the storyline still has some interesting twists, turns and tumbles.

The biggest and most dangerous gang in Chicago, the Nations, was run by a man the cops wanted desperately to take down.He has twenty-year-old advanced mathematics prodigy, Mason Tracy, that takes care of his books and keeps everything under the IRS thresholds for investigation. Escape” starts off with Harney and his partner tailing a potential kidnapper of a teenage girl, and ends in a devastating outcome that surprisingly caught me off guard. In 2014, he was sworn in as the youngest-serving Justice of the Illinois Appellate Court, where he now spends his days writing judicial opinions.

I didn't realise it was book 3 in a series and I haven't read the previous books but I don't think that took away from the story. Jericho Hooper is built up pretty big in the beginning but plays a smaller role than expected, and also comes across a bit stiff and one dimensional. Billy Harney is a new addition to my roster of Favorite Detectives in Literature and book 3 did not disappoint. Patterson and Ellis offer up a decent piece of writing here, sure to find a number of readers eager to explore Billy Harney a little more. Decent characters pepper the story and provide entertainment throughout, though none standout as being stellar for me.I was especially disappointed that so much unnecessary nasty language was used in this middle school story ~ I know middle schoolers hear and use profanity all the time but I see no reason for a popular author to encourage it! Chicago PD Detective Billy Harney was on the trail of a kidnapper, who as far as they knew, had a victim in the vehicle as they followed him. While not the best of the Patterson’s attributed series, it kept me intrigued until the final page turn, with a cliffhanger of its own. Harney’s sordid past and willingness to bend the rules help grease the wheels to ensure that nothing will keep CPD from catching the accused, once they are identified.