On Quicktrim

I look around my room and I see SEASON OF THE MACHETE by James Patterson, and I'm sorry because I had succeeded in forgetting it. I've heard that he was better earlier in his career before he collaborated with so many other writers, but this book is over 30 years old and it seems to me to have his virtues and faults. It's very gory and dramatic, but also confused and un-credible. He didn't even present all his back story. I still have no idea why the husband and wife team did what they did. Or what the CIA and the Mafia wanted them to do. Or why. I think it had some buried message of anti-imperialism, but it was too far buried. It did succeed in grossing you out -- using a machete to kill and chop dead bodies up. They didn't need quicktrim to lose weight. Though, actually, the man killed the people with a gun first. Why? I don't know. Those questions are never answered. Maybe he matured later. I suspect co-writers do most of the work these days.