Lion & Lamb by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski

Published by ‎ Little, Brown and Company on August 14, 2023

Lion & Lamb. Isn’t that a little too cute? More troublesome is that it’s a little too obvious. The title, like the novel itself, doesn’t reflect an abundance of effort.

The novel is a murder mystery. The victim, Archie Hughes, is an NFL quarterback. Someone with the stature of a Tom Brady, including the hot celebrity wife (although Brady’s is now an ex-wife). I doubt the novel intends to invite other comparisons, as the novel’s quarterback is more than a little sleazy, not to mention dead. He also played for the Eagles. Perhaps Archie’s sleaziness has something to do with the bullet that found its way into his skull while he was sitting in his Maserati.

Veena Lion and Cooper Lamb are two high profile private investigators in Philadelphia. They compete against each other for business but occasionally sleep together. When Archie is murdered, the DA hires Lamb to help make its case against the prime suspect, Archie’s wife Vanessa. Naturally, Vanessa’s lawyer hires Lion to make a case for her innocence. And naturally, Lion and Lamb both insist they will go wherever the evidence takes them in their quest for the truth. For that reason, they decide to keep no secrets from each other. I’m not sure it’s quite ethical for a defense attorney’s investigator to share information with the prosecution’s investigator, but ethical or not, that’s the story.

The plot builds little suspense but it does offer the traditional elements of a murder mystery, including misdirection and an abundance of suspects. The obvious clues point to Vanessa, apart from the automatic assumption that a murder victim must have been killed by his or her spouse. Most damaging is the murder weapon that a gardener digs up in Vanessa’s yard.

Archie and Vanessa had two kids who are often in the care of their hot nanny. She’s a suspect, as is the police detective who is canoodling with the nanny while investigating the murder. He's also investigating a second murder that might or might not be related. A gambling subplot brings in the team owners as suspects. A tight end might also be a suspect, if only because he often seems to be lurking. Perhaps the killing was a random robbery, as Archie's Superbowl ring is missing.

The solution to the mystery is unconvincing, but farfetched attempts to surprise the reader have become commonplace in modern mysteries. Occasional action scenes, complete with gunplay, are a bit too casual (if not downright silly) to allow the novel to be categorized as a thriller. It’s almost a middle-aged version of a cozy mystery, given its strict avoidance of naughty words and its suggestions of sexual encounters that are far from explicit.

My only serious gripe about Lion & Lamb is the authors’ writing style. Most of the novel consists of dialog, often in transcript form, a style attributed to the habit that both protagonists have adopted a habit of recording all their conversations. Unlike a narrative, dialog is easy to write. Some readers will happily embrace the novel as a “page turner,” but it’s easy to turn pages rapidly when there is so little content on each page.

The dialog doesn’t seem genuine, but placing that concern aside, the novel makes no attempt to establish an atmosphere through the story’s setting. Philadelphia might as well be Kansas City or Phoenix. Nor does it build the story’s background beyond the most basic facts. Characterization is nearly nonexistent. Lamb’s kids and puppy are props; they add no flesh to the cardboard from which the protagonist is constructed.

In a mystery, plots are generally more important than characterization, setting, or atmosphere. Lion & Lamb would have been a better book if the authors had made a greater effort to include all the elements that make a novel memorable. Still, they did enough to earn a guarded recommendation for mystery fans seeking a breezy, PG-rated novel.

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