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Alex Cross is a former Washington, DC cop and FBI profiler who is now happily in private practice as a psychologist. He is also involved with a wonderful woman, Bree Stone, an FBI agent, and their relationship is going very well. Out of the blue a new killer arrives on the scene. He has a liking for live and very public homicides. While acting out a character, this killer stages a murder and after he's sure he has a large audience he slaughters his victim in the most gruesome way. This killer even mentions Alex to make sure that he comes back to crime-fighting. At the same time, Alex's most crazed foe, wealthy and urbane murderer Kyle Craig, is working on his elaborate escape from the highest security prison in the US. He also has death on his mind, both against Alex as his ex-friend and against this newest predator, who has the nerve to think he is as talented a killer as Kyle Craig. As the new killer works out even more elaborate and public executions, Alex, Bree and his friend and ex-partner, cop John Sampson, all work hard to find the killer, and before long the cops become the target of the killer's homicidal desires. On top of that, Craig manages to find a way out of prison and he travels the world getting himself up to speed to once again become the most famous slaughterer and to become the man who gets Alex Cross. DOUBLE CROSS is yet another example of what James Patterson's writing has become. It's a short-chaptered, fast-reading bit of fluff that is the lightest of stories filled with stick figure characters and fast-paced moments of gruesome action. I found myself hearing his evil characters speak with the inflections of the bad guys in cartoons; the speeches from the murderer are completely over the top. The evil-doers go about their nasty deeds with no interference from the authorities whatsoever, killing with no thought that anyone other than Alex and his gang might stop them. The good guys work hard to find the killers while trying to be a good parent and family member. I found too much of this book to have no connection to any type of everyday reality. Both killers go about their terrible murders and no policeman or FBI agent or anyone who might be trained to take down criminals are ever around to stop them, even when the deeds are done in public in Washington, DC! Alex, Sampson and Bree all talk about the killers taking out revenge against them and their families, but they still refuse to take any hard precautions to keep them safe, so the reader can't really feel that there is any actual tension. The reader is left with the feeling that there are no people in the world other than these particular good and bad guys and so there's no reason to think that any real danger might happen to the leads. In fact, in this series there have been so many killers who have been thought to be dead, only to be still alive and kicking, that death no longer means anything. Picking up a James Patterson book to read these days is no longer a guarantee of a good story and great read. This book is an example of the worst of his writing lately. The story is thin, there is no real tension anymore and the story ends only as an introduction to the next book that you know is going to come out sooner or later. If you have read the other Alex Cross books I'm sure you'll want to read this one, hoping for Patterson to once again come through with a great installment for his character. If you've never read any Cross books before don't bother with this one. It's too small a story to show you how great the series once was and it won't make you want to read any other books in the series either.
Reviewed by A. L. Katz, October 2007
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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