26 Beauties

Name: 26 Beauties
Rating: 4.55 (11 reviews)
Author: James Patterson

Women's Murder Club • Book 26

by James Patterson

4.55 Goodreads

(11 ratings)

352 pages Published 2026 Thriller

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Why You'll Love This

Someone is hunting San Francisco's women one by one, and the only thing standing between them and disappearing forever is a detective who refuses to believe in impossible.

Great if you want: a procedural with a tight-knit ensemble and high personal stakes
The experience: fast, propulsive chapters — built for readers who lose track of time
The writing: Patterson strips prose to its bones — momentum over texture, always
Skip if: you haven't read the series — character history matters here

About This Book

In San Francisco, women are vanishing — and the pattern is too precise to be coincidence. Detective Lindsay Boxer has been quietly connecting the dots: a body on the shoreline, another in Golden Gate Park, a growing list of names with no answers attached. When a desperate father interrupts her evening with news that his daughter is missing, Lindsay realizes the clock has been ticking far longer than anyone knew. A call to Interpol brings cold news — cases like this rarely end with survivors. But Lindsay and the Women's Murder Club have never been good at accepting the odds.

Patterson has spent twenty-five books sharpening this series into something that consistently delivers: tight chapters that pull you forward, a protagonist with real emotional weight, and an ensemble dynamic that feels genuinely lived-in rather than assembled for plot convenience. 26 Beauties uses that foundation well, building dread through accumulation — each missing woman adding pressure rather than spectacle. The result is a thriller that moves with real urgency while keeping its human stakes firmly in view.