Hey, Jim, what's the rush? For the first 25 years of your career, you averaged less than a book a year, and most of them were dandies. But since we hit the 21st century, you've joined with several co-authors and gone nuts: three books each in 2001, 2002 and 2003; four in 2004; and five in 2005.

Where will it all stop? And, by the way, how many of the words in those co-authored books are actually yours?

Lifeguard, the fourth of this year's five and the third with a co-author, is a case in point. Sure, it has your trademark style - short chapters, lots of action and a protagonist with more lives than a witch's black cat - but it's not as hard-hitting or as compelling as the novels we anticipated for a year, books like Kiss the Girls, Along Came a Spider and When the Wind Blows.

Your fans must not mind, because every couple of months, when the new book comes out, it hits No. 1 on all the lists. And it's summer, right? Most people don't want to work hard enough to read the classics.

It's time to put the old brain on cruise control, and a book like Lifeguard is just the thing for that.

So, for those readers who need their Patterson fix, here's what to expect from the fourth Patterson/Andrew Gross collaboration.

Ned Kelly is a 30-something stud employed as a lifeguard in Palm Beach, Fla. We never actually see him working, so the title is meant as a metaphor for the fact that he can't seem to save the lives of those he cares about.

This is about as literary as the book gets.

Ned comes from Brockton, Mass., the son of a petty crook. One of his brothers was killed in a robbery. Ned tried to escape from the family business by going into teaching, but lost his job when a student falsely accused him of improprieties.

As the story opens, it looks like Ned's luck is changing. He has just met and bedded the woman of his dreams, and four of his friends have offered him a surefire way to make a million dollars in one night.

It's a simple plan: just take a few paintings from the home of a wealthy collector. All Ned has to do is set up a few diversions and drive.

However, something goes horribly wrong, and the four friends and the woman of Ned's dreams all end up dead, and the paintings are missing. Now the local police, the FBI, the owner of the paintings and various killers are all after Ned.

I'm not giving much away here. All of this happens in the first 45 pages, which in a Patterson novel equals about 15 chapters.

Ned's only hope is to find out who the real killers are. But to do this he needs help.

Enter Ellie Shurtleff, a rookie FBI agent and art expert, who puts her career on the line by believing in Ned and helping him in his quest.

Solving the crime will tie his family, police corruption and the mob together and cause the death of another brother. Will Ellie become the new woman of Ned's dreams?

Of course, she will.

The authors occasionally draw parallels with the protagonist and the historical Ned Kelly, a 19th-century Australian outlaw. But a closer connection might be to call Ned a poor man's Tom Jones. His qualities of amorality and ethics are hard to reconcile, yet he is a likable rogue.

Patterson and Gross are no Henry Fielding, but their mixture of humor and derring-do adds to the fun of this otherwise middling summer read.

And if you do decide to put a little effort into a summer read, there's always Tom Jones, which, incidentally, is a dandy book.

Mark Graham reviews Unreal Worlds titles weekly in Weekend@Home. He lives in Arvada.