The Big Bad Wolf

Rating:
Summary: Good thriller!
Review: I enjoyed the heck out of this, probably more so cause I just finished "Sam's letters to Jennifer" and it did nothing for me. While this is not the best Alex Cross novel it was still nice to be back in familar territory! If you like the Cross novels you should enjoy this one.

Rating:
Summary: (4+) Will the FBI Change Alex Cross ?
Review: The long awaited next book in James Patterson's Alex Cross series is back with Alex now beginning his FBI career after being recruited by the new director Ron Burns. Readers of the series know that Alex has decided it is time to leave the Washington PD and continue his career elsewhere. Despite Alex's trepidations about bureaucracy within "The Bureau", Burns has convinced Alex that his police instincts and profiling skills would be incredibly useful as Burns tries to achieve the seemingly impossible task of eliminating both the bureaucrats and cowboys from the FBI's ranks. This is typical James Patterson, mostly two to four page chapters, a rapidly developing plot, minimal character development, and a clever villain with a violent streak. In juxtaposition is the pull of Alex's family, Little Alex, Jannie, Damon and Nana Mama as well as his long distance relationship with Jamilla Hughes.

While Alex is involved in his FBI intake orientation and training, a series of widely scattered and very unusual unsolved abductions cause Director Burns to involve Alex in the case, creating enmity within the ranks (including from Alex's superior) due to the special treatment that he receives. There are no ransom demands, and Alex and his associates believe that the victims are being sold and traded as part of a white slave ring operated by wealthy individuals with bizarre and illegal inclinations. When two particularly high profile kidnappings catch the attention of the media, pressure increases on the FBI to solve the case and (not unexpectedly) a few clues create the suspicion that a shadowy figure (THE WOLF) whose existence has never been verified by the FBI is at the center of this kidnapping ring. He is reputed to be a former KGB agent who now is head of the Red Mafiya in the US, but there have been no clues to his identity or location. A few breaks create momentum that eventually makes Alex optimistic that they are on the trail of THE BIG BAD WOLF, but of course you know the villain will create several instances of misdirection and layers of reality for his pursuers to fight through. Meanwhile, Alex's personal world is rocked by the reappearance of Christine Johnson (Little Alex's mother) in DC and her desire to become a part of her child's life despite her (temporary and understandable) abandonment of him given the turmoil that a previous case of Alex's had caused in her life.

This is a fastmoving, intricately plotted very fast read - you would be surprised at anything else in an Alex Cross story. And you have the "pleasure" of seeing Kyle Craig continue to play a (very peripheral ) role in Alex's life. The background element regarding the need to reform the FBI echoes the daily headlines and rings true. While the thread regarding Christine is interesting, there is much less involvement of Alex's family than in several of the other books. There is a great degree of violence, including the sexual incidents which are an integral part of the story, but in most cases the descriptions are very brief, and in only a few cases is there nauseous detail. Besides the obvious pursuit of the WOLF and the discovery of his real identity, the biggest mystery that the reader faces is whether this is a self contained story or whether it will simply be the first installment of several stories regarding the necessity of unraveling the several layers of the WOLF's identity. (You won't find out until the last ten pages.) And at the same time it is not clear whether Alex's complex relationships with Jamilla and Christine will be resolved. The factors that kept this from attaining a five star rating were the even more than usual number of loose ends to the story and the complete lack of any character development at all. I was especially disappointed at the minor role of Lili Olsen, a fourteen and a half year old ("going on twenty-four") computer genius whose abilities to hack into web sites help Alex despite the skepticism of his associates. She seemed a wonderful character with a lot of potential, but with the exception of one memorable line she simply disappeared as the story plunged forward.

So when you want a quick read for a short flight or a rainy day, you will enjoy this if the Patterson formula appeals to you. But don't expect much detail, and be ready to suspend your belief about the plausibility of many of the events. Certainly not his best, but much more enjoyable than many for me because of the lack of gruesome detail contained in some of his other books.

Tucker Andersen

Rating:
Summary: Who Swiped the Ending
Review: The Wolf is a Russian criminal, head of the Red Mafiya, who was brought into the States by the CIA and now he wants to be the head don of American Crime. He bribes a guard at a maximum security prison and gets in to meet an American Mafia don, ostensibly to offer a merging of organizations, but he kills the American criminal and breaks all the bones in his body, a Russian Mafiya custom known as zamochit.

Alex Cross is a new agent in at Club Fed, what the recruits call the FBI Training Academy in Quantico. He has only been there for six weeks, when the Director of the FBI takes him out of school to help work on an abduction case. Someone is kidnapping women, and sometimes young men too. They are never heard from again and because of Alex's uncanny ability of bringing serial killers to justice, the director wants him on the case.

Alex quickly figures out that these are not normal kidnappings. There is no pattern and there is a team involved. These people are being bought, either as sex slaves or something worse.

And as Alex is chasing the the Wolf, the Wolf is watching him and that's just about as far as I'm going with this review. Alex Cross has always been one of my favorite fictional characters, but something happened here that I don't understand. Every time there's a breakthrough in the case, Alex is pulled off it and sent back to school, something that not only made no sense, but also something that the real Alex Cross would never stand for.

It was disappointing to see Alex knuckle under and it was horribly out of character for him. Also I don't have to worry about giving away the ending of the story, because there was no ending. Mr. Patterson just seemed to give up on the book, or maybe he wrote a super long novel and divided it in half, giving us part one this year and holding out on part two till next Christmas. I don't think that's fair. I felt cheated and this book only gets three stars from me.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene