Alex Cross Must Die

 Alex Cross Must Die is the 32^nd novel in the Alex Cross series by James Patterson, although it has been some years since I’ve read one of these. In this one, Alex must deal with a madman who just shot down an American Airlines plane while it was on its final approach to Reagan Airport in D.C., killing more than 100 people. Cross is also working to solve serial murder case. Meanwhile, he continues with his current love interest, recovers from a shooting injury in the prior book, and contends with his bright high school student son who is very interested in finding a way to help his dad solve the serial murder case, even though dad has just grounded him for unexpectedly showing up at a crime scene.

 

The book is a thriller. Although I didn’t gain any valuable information from the book, and although I missed the reason for the title, I was entertained for some hours. I would classify this book as an airplane book – a novel that will distract me for the length of a LAX to JFK flight, but it would not distract me from taking a nap if that’s what I wanted to do.

Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson

Although Run Rose Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson has been panned by others as boring and dull, and the parts narrated by Dolly herself may have seemed trite and unworthy of her lustrous career, I enjoyed the book on Audible. This is not great literature, but there was a lot of Dolly in it. Dolly played the role of Ruthana Ryder, a retired country singing legend, and surely some of this work was partially autobiographical. Ruthana decided to take Annie Lee Keyes under her wing without knowing the darkness of Annie Lee (nee Ruth McCord) Keye’s past. Ruthana took the very talented and beautiful Annie Lee and helped her get breaks that would not have come otherwise. As a result, her rise to stardom was rapid. However, the past would not let her go and continued to pursue her. I found the protagonist to be possible. While I was willing to suspend my sense of reality testing, the book was just fun. 

 

While I typically prefer to read books and not to listen to them, I’m a fan of Dolly, and I loved listening to her. I also liked the auxilliary characters. Perhaps this novel should be considered an airplane book, something you could enjoy on a cross country flight, just for the entertainment of it.  

Cross Justice

This is the 23^rd novel in the Alex Cross series by the indefatigable James Patterson. In Cross Justice, Alex goes home to Starksville, North Carolina for the first time in 35 years. His hometown has so many unpleasant memories that he’s avoided going there, but he’s called back to help out with his cousin’s troubles. Stefan Tate, a physical education teacher, was accused of raping one of his high school female students, and then sodomizing and murdering one of his male students. The evidence against him is overwhelming. The book begins with a murder in Florida by a cross-dresser – so how could that tie into the events in North Carolina?

This was one of Patterson’s action-packed, can’t-put-it-down novels. Sorry for the clichés, but they work for this book. Patterson involves Alex’s entire extended family including his wife, three kids, grandmother, aunt, and multiple cousins. There are great bad guys. I thought the plot worked very well until about the 95% mark of the book, right until the final family mystery was revealed. Those of us who love this genre must be willing to suspend our attachment to reality, but sometimes the stretch that takes goes a bit too far. So, while loving the courtroom drama that brings this book to a climax, I found myself saying, “Oh, come on! Really?” If you read this one, I promise you’ll be entertained.

Murder House by David Ellis and James Patterson

The neglected multi-million-dollar beach front estate in the Hamptons at 7 Ocean Drive has been dubbed the Murder House due to numerous gruesome murders that have occurred there over the years.  The Dahlquist family who built the mansion is responsible for some of the murders as each generation produced a rapist and murderer always named Holden.  Finally Holden VI intends to end this family horror by not procreating and committing suicide… but the murders continue.

Jenna Rose is a NYPD cop who is forced out of her job in Manhattan and is hired by her Uncle Lang who heads the Southampton Town Police Department. As a child, Jenna’s family often visited the Hamptons but abruptly stopped their visits when she was eight years old.  She knew some violent event had happened to keep her parents away but Jenna had suppressed that memory.  Now with her parents both deceased, her uncle is her closest living relative and offers her a job to save her career as a cop.  She no sooner arrives when a Hollywood power broker and his mistress are found dead in the Murder House.  Evidence points to a local handyman, Noah Walker as the lead suspect.  As his trial begins, the police chief, Jenna’s uncle and lead witness for the prosecution is murdered.  Noah Walker is ultimately sent to prison but Jenna continues to investigate and becomes convinced Noah is innocent.  Her testimony frees Noah but the murders continue.  The new police chief bands her from the murder investigations and he fires her for disobeying his orders.  But with the killer still at large, Jenna needs to solve this case for her own peace of mind.  She finds out what really happened to her as a eight year old and who saved her and becomes convinced one more Dahlquist generation is involved.  But who is it and can she find out before he kills her?

Murder House is a very good mystery, thriller.  The plot is complex with plenty of twists and turns and offers several convincing choices for the ‘who done it.’  But I found I didn’t particularly like the protagonist, Jenna.  First, I found it odd she could not remember a traumatic event as an eight year old.  Second, I found her a little too impulsive, a little too quick to draw conclusions and act based on limited evidence at hand.  Finally, she always haled from a position of moral high ground that I never felt like she earned…. perhaps a little better character development would have helped.

Invisible by James Patterson and David Ellis

Invisible is one of those books written by a somewhat unknown author and branded by James Patterson to help sell it.  Sorry for the sarcasm but I’ve read several David Ellis books and find him talented in his own right.  Therefore, I find the marketing gimmick manipulative and even offensive.  I recently saw James Paterson on a morning talk show where he stated he didn’t need to do anything for the money anymore.  So I guess he thinks he’s being philanthropic by helping promising young writers but for me his arrogance over shadows his good intentions.  That said Invisible is a reasonably good thriller and obviously has the David Ellis style.  My advice is to read it and forget about how it was marketed… enough said, maybe too much.

MISTRESS by James Patterson with David Ellis

MISTRESS by James Patterson with David Ellis is one of those collaborations between a well-known author (Patterson) and an up and comer (Ellis).  The main character, Ben Casper is a geeky 20 something who owns an online newspaper in Washington, D.C.  His ADHD like mind jumps from one thought to another and tends to focus on Presidential trivia when he is most excited.  Since it’s written in first person, present tense that can be both entertaining and annoying.

Ben has a thing for his woman friend Diana Hotchkiss until she mysteriously falls to her death from her apartment’s balcony.  Diana’s death is ruled a suicide but Ben doesn’t buy it and launches an investigation of his own.  He learns Diana is in fact leading a double life and sharing neither with her family back in Wisconsin.  On the surface Diana has a fabulous job at the CIA that brings her into contact with high level government officials.  But Ben soon discovers she has more personal and secret relationships with individuals in government… and not just our government.  Some are willing to kill to remain anonymous.

People formerly close the Diana begin to die suspiciously. Ben attempts to bluff the CIA to flush out the truth but succeeds only in turning the conspirator’s focus to him.  With only hunches, no evidence and two attempts on his life, Ben appeals to the police.  They agree that Diana's death may not have been a suicide but evidence points to Ben as her murderer. With his business and his life in jeopardy, Ben takes one last risk to clear himself and reveal Diana's murderer.

MISTRESS is a good effort for the team of authors.  I’m not sure I understand why the collaboration.  Ellis does the work, Paterson and staff provide the marketing I suspect.  I’ve read and reviewed David Ellis before and see a promising future as a stand-alone author.  If that career fails he is secure in his first chosen career as a prosecutor.  He prosecuted and convicted Governor Rod Blagojevich in the impeachment trial before the Illinois Senate.  I hope he sticks with career number two.

Step on a Crack by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Michael Bennett is NYC’s chief hostage negotiator who happens to be the foster parent for 10 children, thanks to his wife’s generous heart. But, his wife is now dying of cancer, and is hospitalized in the final stages of that disease. Meanwhile, the former president’s wife, Caroline Hopkins, dies unexpectedly from what is a cleverly disguised murder. Then, at her all-stars-only funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, there is a terrorist takeover with many hostages taken, all of whom are wealthy celebrities or famous politicians. Bennett is in charge of negotiating with Jack, the lead terrorist, but he does not know about the inside guy, “The Neat Man,” who has predicted every move that the police and Bennett would make. The bad guys get their money, all $73 million, and all but one gets away – at least at first. The story line is a simple one, and there are not that many characters involved. There were some very interesting minor characters like Bennett’s grandfather, a priest, and his nanny, Mary Catherine. At the same time, the story is compelling and surprising. Patterson does a good job making Michael human, as well as portraying the agony of having a dying wife and the joy of raising his remarkable children. This was a quick and enjoyable read, one of the better “airplane” books that I’ve read in a while.

Worst Case by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Mike Bennett is a NYC detective, a widower, who has been left with the 10 kids that he and his wife adopted. He seems like he runs a happy and healthy household, which happens to be Catholic. There is a Catholic subplot to this based on some Biblical writings about Ash Wednesday. But, there is a new murderer on the scene, an old radical leftist from the 70s who sold out, and is now unhappy about the fact that he has become wealthy and influential, hardly living up to the ideals of his youth. He begins by murdering a couple kids from the wealthiest families in NYC who attend the same affluent private high school that he attended. With the first kidnapping-murder, the FBI gets called in to help, and the beautiful FBI agent, Emily Parker, provides Mike with a love interest. Of course, there is some jealousy over Mike with the nanny, and that provide some comic tension through the story. The name of the bad guy is not revealed until far into the story, so I’m not going to tell you who it is. The climactic scene takes place at the NYSE trading floor where the bad guy has enough explosives to blow the place up, along with a couple more rich kids. This was a good story and a fast read. Not great literature, but very entertaining – a good airplane book and one that nephew Boedeker might consider taking with him on the place to Scotland for the British Open. I will occasionally continue to read James Patterson

West Coast Don

Witch & Wizard by James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet

Remarkably, this is a book I chose not to finish after getting halfway into it. Take my advice and don’t waste your time. I’ve chosen not to finish books at the rate of about 1 per 500, so you get the gist. It is a fanciful story about the taking over of the world, as we know it, by the New Order. But, their progression towards total control is thwarted by a family whose teenage children, Whit and Wisty, are respectively a wizard and witch. As the teens get seized from their home in the middle of the night by storm troopers, they discover for the first time that they have magical powers. In jail, they learn more about how to make use of those powers to avoid their scheduled execution. That’s enough, but I’ll leave you with one line of dialogue in which Whit has just been saved by the spirit of his girlfriend on earth, a teen who was killed by the New Order and now appears in spectral form. Whit says, “I reached out to try to hug Celia in a moment of relief that we’d made it through to the other side. It didn’t matter how awkward and ridiculous it was trying to hug a ghost. That’s the cool thing about love. In my opinion, anyway.” After that line, I got through a couple more pages before giving up the ghost of this book.

West Coast Don

I, Alex Cross by James Patterson

The Alex Cross series is one of my favorites, and I’m sure you’ll read it without too much of a review from me. I thought the plot was a bit outrageous when a “high level white house” person is implicated in a series of murders of high-prices prostitutes (would the story have been as compelling if they were two-bit, acned, deformed and specially-challenged has been hookers who were coming out of retirement?) who have been working in an exclusive club that caters to the power mongers in D.C. Cross is drawn into the case when his estranged niece turns up as one of the murdered women, and it is through his investigation of that murder that the connection to the ritzy brothel and the white house gets uncovered. Still, Patterson does a good job disguising the identity of the culprit until the very end. Patterson mixes in a good subplot about the near death experiences due to old age of Nana, the woman who raised Cross and now lives in his house and is helping to raise his children. So, Cross is torn between pursuing the case, being at the hospital for his Nana, taking care of his kids, and developing his relationship with his new woman, Bree. It may be an airplane book, but it is a good one.

West Coast Don

Alex Cross's Trial by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo

I thought EC Don had already written about this book, but a search of the blog came up with nothing, so I’ll give you a brief review. This is one of the Alex Cross series which is co-written by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo. The last book I reported about took place in 1907, and this one takes place in 1906. Unlike Cussler’s Wrecker, this was a very good book. I felt like I was reading “To Kill a Mockingbird.” The plot has to do with a white man who was raised in podunk Eudora, Mississippi, has gotten a Harvard law education, and then hooked up with Teddy Roosevelt at the Battle of Bunker Hill in the Spanish-American War. The lawyer, Benjamin Corbett, ends up in D.C., and he is having his own marital troubles because he won’t give up protecting the downtrodden. That means he is not making money on his cases, and his wife wants a better life circumstance. It is then that Teddy decides to send Ben down to Eudora to look into the surge in lynchings that has been going on in the south. Risking his marriage coming to an end, Ben goes back to his home town where he has not been in six years since the death of his mother. His father is still alive and working there, but Ben and his father are estranged. Ben investigates the ongoing lynchings while encountering so many of the people he remembers from childhood. He moves in and out of the black community in the “Quarters,” and the white community in the rest of Eudora, developing very interesting characters in all places. I am rating this one at the top of my list for recommendations.

West Coast Don