Prompt – A book with a three word title.
Medium – Book
About the Book – The book begins with Alex Cross, a psychologist and former FBI agent (now FBI contractor), and his family at the funeral of the President of the USA. Soon after the funeral, a senator is killed on her way to an early morning yoga class, leaving the country shocked by the deaths of two members of the cabinet. As readers, we start to meet supplementary characters who narrate parts of the book, and we soon realise that these characters are all assassins, hired by an unknown person to try and de-stabilise the USA. Alex Cross and his wife, Bree, investigate the killings and soon find that the danger may not be over.
My Rating – 9/10. This was the first Alex Cross and only second James Patterson book that I had read (see my blog on ‘Juror No. 3’) and to be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. I have generally found that with books with a recurring detective, after book ten, the whole thing gets a bit old. So I was pleasantly surprised with this book. There were a number of things I really enjoyed about the book – the short and fast-paced chapters, the shifting in narrative from Alex Cross to the different assassins, the nuances in the motivations of some of the assassins and the ending. Which was great, and not at all what had been expected.
I also really liked the character of Alex Cross. He is cool and calculating, a prime example of a brilliant detective and psychologist. His family are great, especially Bree, who is the Chief of the Washington DC Metro Police. He is protective of her, but not to the point where he feels the need to be all masculine and stop her from doing her job. There are lots of different strands to the story, one of which only comes to fruition right in the last couple of pages and ties nicely into the next book in series (which I have already added to my TBR pile). Unlike books which you expect to be good and surprise you with their awfulness, this one was a book I expected to not be great, but was actually right up my street. As a side-note, I am not a fan of too much swearing in books, and this was great in that regard – some swearing, but not too much!
Would I read it again? As much as I enjoyed it, probably not. But I would like to read the other Alex Cross books!
Jen's Book Blog 