James Patterson is a demi-god of the bestseller list. Month after month his thrillers sit near the top of the list. The titles change but the Patterson style remains rock steady: short chapters, short paragraphs, short sentences, and ruthless, cold-blooded murderers.

I read them in amazement. It’s remarkable how much Patterson can cut from a story and still make it work. Not a wasted word and hardly a syllable spent on character development. We readers just want a good fast thriller.

But this king of the thriller, like a despot who controls one country but who eyes another, is moving into romance. His weepy tear-jerker Suzanne’s Diary proves that’s a bad idea. In his fast-paced thrillers his cardboard characters work fine, but they make Suzanne’s Diary feel nearly non-existent. A character in a romance needs some minimal interior life – what’s love without a few inner feelings? But instead of interior, we get hackneyed paper-thin cliches.

At one point, I couldn’t help laughing. He actually describes a character this way: “She was an ordinary, regular person.” Writing teachers all across America would groan at that one, but does Patterson care? Probably not. The book was a huge bestseller.