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Fiction. Mystery. Thriller. HTML:Discover the classic thriller that launched the #1 detective series of the past twenty-five years, now one of PBS's "100 Great American Reads" Alex Cross is a homicide detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. He works and lives in the ghettos of D. C. and looks like Muhammad Ali in his prime. He's a tough guy from a tough part of town who wears Harris Tweed jackets and likes to relax by banging out Gershwin tunes on his baby grand piano. But he also has two adorable kids of his own, and they are his own special vulnerabilities. Jezzie Flanagan is the first woman ever to hold the highly sensitive job as supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington. Blond, mysterious, seductive, she's got an outer shell that's as tough as it is beautiful. She rides her black BMW motorcycle at speeds of no less than 100 mph. What is she running from? What is her secret? Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan are about to have a forbidden love affair-at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji, who wants to commit the "crime of the century," is playing at the top of his game. Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim? Gary Soneji is every parent's worst nightmare. He has become Alex Cross's nightmare. And now, reader, he's about to become yours.… (more)
User reviews
Otherwise the novel plays out as a fairly standard police procedural thriller, where Cross is faced with a kidnapper of children. Gary Soneji is cut from the same cloth as most fictional psychopaths--scary but brilliant. Cross works with a beautiful female romantic interest in law enforcement (tm), Jezzie Flanagan of the Secret Service.
This is well-plotted and paced and was a very fast read. Patterson is notorious for his bite-sized flash fiction chapters of less than a thousand words that keep you flipping the pages. As I said, I even liked Cross enough to read more books. The second book though, Kiss the Girls, frankly repulsed me, (It dealt--graphically--with a serial rapist) and Alex grew more and more a Marty Stu, even gaining a supervillain obsessed with him in a later book, and the books read more and more to me as if Patterson was phoning them in. This first book though makes for an enjoyable beach or airplane read.
Gary Soneji is a murderer masquerading as a favorite instructor. He fosters dreams
Along Came A Spider has just
Back Cover Blurb:
He had always wanted to be famous. When he kidnapped two well-known rich kids, it was headline news. Then one of them was found - dead - and
For such a high profile case, they needed the top people - Alex Cross, a black detective with a PhD in psychology, and Jezzie Flanagan, an ambitious and beautiful Secret Service agent - yet even they were no match for the killer. He had the unnerving ability to switch from blood-crazed madness to clear-eyed sanity in an instant. But was he the helpless victim of a multiple-personality disorder - or a brilliant, cold-blooded manipulator?
As he and the rest of the country watched Flanagan and Cross falling into his every trap, he knew he had made it - he was controlling the deadly game, and he still hadn't made his most devastating move....