James Patterson Fifth Horseman Themes

James Patterson’s 5th Horseman is the fifth installment of the Women’s Murder Club series. He continues his magnificent ability to maintain an underlying meaning in his work or a theme. The theme of 5th Horseman is that friendships will either become stronger or break in times of trial. Patterson demonstrates this theme with three scenarios: a death, an argument and a separation.
The death of one of the main character’s mother (Keiko Castellano) is the first example of Patterson’s theme. Yuki Castellano, the daughter of the deceased woman, is caught completely off guard. One of Castellano’s closest friends, Lindsay Boxer, is the one Castellano leans on. Boxer “sat beside Yuki in the waiting room” while they were waiting for news of Keiko who had collapsed earlier that day (Patterson 14). After the doctor brought news about Keiko, Boxer put her “arm around Yuki’s shoulders” (Patterson 15). Boxer and Castellano were both great friends before Keiko Castellano’s death, but because of her death they grew closer together. This time of trial caused these two friends’ relationship to become stronger. …show more content…
Patterson also shows this side of the equation in his book 5th Horseman. While Boxer’s friendship strengthened with Castellano, it degraded with Cindy Thomas, another one of her friends—or ex-friends. Boxer is in the middle of an investigation trying to uncover psychopathic-serial-killing employee at a local hospital when she reads the paper and sees that her news-reporting friend, Thomas, printed a story on how a doctor is under investigation (Patterson 285). Boxer calls up Thomas and blows a fuse saying that printing the story may “[drive]s him underground,” Thomas returns fire claiming that it’s not “right for you to come down on me” (Patterson