The Murder House

The Murder House is the 2015 James Patterson / David Ellis collaboration and one of the better Patterson co-author thrillers of the mid-2010s. Jenna Murphy, a former NYPD detective banished to the Bridgehampton police department after an internal-affairs scandal, is called to the home of a Hollywood agent and his much younger girlfriend, both murdered in a tableau that is too neatly composed to be the random violence the Hamptons usually denies it produces. The crime scene is also disturbingly similar to a 1995 family killing in the same house that has been a local-legend cold case for twenty years.

Ellis is the heavier writer of the Patterson co-author roster (he is also a sitting Illinois Appellate Court justice in his other life), and his prose carries more weight than the brand’s house style suggests. The dual-time-track plot (1995 cold case alternating with 2015 investigation) is engineered with real craft, and Jenna Murphy is a more interesting Patterson-co-author protagonist than the format usually delivers. The supporting cast (her uncle the local sheriff, the regional FBI agent, the rotation of Hamptons suspects) is built with care. The reveal earns its surprise.

Recommended for fans of Hamptons-set crime fiction (Nelson DeMille’s Plum Island, Linda Fairstein’s Alexandra Cooper series) and for readers looking for books like The Murder House where the dual-timeline structure actually pulls weight. Four stars, and arguably Ellis’s best Patterson collaboration.