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Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: October 31, 2003
Sale Popularity Level: 125145
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Product Description:
Alex Cross' family is in terrible danger-at the same time that his new job with the FBI brings him the scariest case of his career.A team of kidnappers has been snatching successful, upstanding men and women right before their families' eyes-possibly to sell them into slavery.Alex's knowledge of the D.C. streets, together with his unique insights into criminal psychology, make this mindbending case one that only he can solve-if he can just get his colleagues to set aside their staid and outdated methods.With unexpected twists and whiplash surprises, this is another brilliantly irresistible novel from America's bestselling suspense writer.
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Rated by buyers 
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What a disappointing book!
James Patterson has done such a poor job of writing this book, that you wonder exactly what he had in mind. The dialog is banal and full of cliches. The plot is unbelievable. The characters are one dimensional. Even the ending resolves nothing. It just seems to be setting you up for the subsequent book in the series....
The main character, Alex Cross, is incredibly cliched and unbelievable.
He is a bright young police officer, who happens to be black, who takes a job with the FBI. So far, this could actually happen in real life...
But Patterson has decided that Cross will be a super human, so...
- He was an honor student who hold a Phd. From John Hopkins.
- He was a Psychiatrist,
- He was also a police officer
- He then decides to join the FBI
- He doesn't have to attend FBI orientation, because he is that good
- He plays the piano beautifully
- He is an ideal father
- He is the perfect husband
- Every woman he has ever been with is stunning. And brilliant.
- He can leap tall building in a single bound. Well, you get the idea.
The plot itself is almost incomprehensible. The characters are thin, and one dimensional and their motivations seem incomprehensible. For example, at one point a CEO for a very large corporation, and a very rich man himself, somehow decides to become "the money man" for sex slave ring. So he can pick up a few thousand extra bucks? And make himself a target for the "Red Mafia?" This just doesn't make sense.
Cross has an ex-girlfriend named Christine who abandoned their child because "she wasn't emotionally ready to be a mother." Well... she comes back to claim their son, and inexplicibly wins a custody battle, despite no mention of it in the book. Until it is settled. You would have thought that a super dad might have shown up for that hearing!
I honestly think that making grey characters into "super humans" is just as racist as making them subhumans.
Maybe Patterson is playing to some collective guilt, or he just wants to be fashionable.... but he needs to treat grey characters like they were real people, and not as cartoon characters. It matters little that Patterson makes his lead into a superman. It's still a racist thing to do.
This book was written on a Junior High School level, and is aimed at very gullible readers. All the dialog is banal and cliched. All the characters are weak. The plot is simply illogical.
I felt cheated.
Rated by buyers -
I think Patterson needs to take a vacation then return and write the way he did in Kiss the Girls which was the very first Patterson book that I read.
Cross as an FBI agent is in the loop, then out of the loop, etc. etc. without any explanation of why or who is doing it. You have to suspend your disbelieve as things just do not happen this way even with the worst of investigations. Wolf, the master villain, is unstoppable but never any explanation of how he does all the things during the story. He breaks every bone in a prisoner's body in the middle of a maximum security facility with no explanation of how it is done; just that the prisoner is found the subsequent morning.
Can you believe that Wolf drives by in a limo and takes a shot at the FBI and their prisoner and then the chapter ends and nothing is ever said about the shooting, a chase, road blocks, etc.
This is another "best selling book" that should have been 200 pages that was stretched into 390 pages with generous margins and 117 chapter breakes generating a lot of white space.
There were so many unexplained actions through out the book that I was not surprised that the end of the book had no ending. By this time I didn't care who the Wolf was or who his FBI "mole" was, guess those items and more will be in the subsequent book.
Rated by buyers 
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Term LimitsThe Goring CollectionThe Pelican Brief
Kidnapping is not unusual to top law enforcement and certainly not to the FBI.
However James Patterson has thrown a curve ball at the general kidnapping scenario. There are no threats or ransom demands of any kind. The several victims so far are gorgeous drop-dead model types that have no ties to the underworld; at least they had none before they were snatched off the street in broad daylight.
A man and woman are watching Mrs. Elizabeth, Lizzie, Connolly, gorgeous mother of three daughters, as she exits a fashionable Atlanta department store. Lizzie Connolly wrestles with her packages as she walks directly toward the parking structure.
The woman quickly walked past Mrs. Connolly, turned and put the victim in a vice like grip as the man placed a chemically laced cloth over her face. Lizzie Connolly screamed and kicked until she was rendered helpless by the chemical substance and dropped to the concrete floor. The kidnapper's placed the unconscious woman into her own station wagon and blithely drove out of the parking structure, changed to another car just blocks away and the abduction was complete.
Alex Cross, old time law enforcement but new and in training for his current job with the FBI. Cross is called out of class to the chagrin of his training officer, and assigned to the kidnapping case for reasons of his unique expertise.
There were no ransom demands or death threats for the several kidnapped women; law enforcement was stuck without a motive in the case. Rumour and innuendo provide only vague clues that seem to point toward the Russian mafia.
An unidentified sinister figure called Wolf, one time KGB and high up in the Russian mafia here in the states emerges as a potential but elusive target. At the same time Wolf was put on the FBI's most wanted list, the kidnapping for ransom case moved into a white slave investigation.
James Patterson has fashioned a who-done-it mystery with enough twist's and turns to keep the most avid mystery buff guessing until the very end.
Tom Barnes author of `The Goring Collection.'
'The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.'
'Doc Holliday's Road to Tombstone.'
Rated by buyers -
Well after reading the previous books in this series and really not liking Four Blind Mice, I have to said this book probably ranked just above that one. Even though the book was a quick read, I don't really understand what's going on. The book takes you from NY, to DC, to FL, to TX, to CO then back to DC. I felt that Alex would eventually connect with "The Wolf" only he never did. I didn't like how the book ended with Christine and Little Alex or with the Wolf. Other than the ending, I have to say the book was a quick read, I still love all the same characters. I hope that John Sampson joins the FBI with Alex, that would make for some interesting writing. All in all the book wasn't totally bad, but really not one of my favorites that in a year I'll remember reading.
Rated by buyers -
You have try to understand what Patterson is doing. He isn't attempting "great writing." It's suspense fiction, and is supposed to use a direct and powerful style. If the style was more elaboate it would get in the way of the plot. Having said that, this isn't his best book. The Wolf is an intersting character or could have been if more developed. But the premise of someone abducting sexy women to be used as sexual entertainment has been done so many times, it isn't an orginal plot. It does have the usual Patterson intensity, though, so many people will find it exciting. His novels are sort of dreamlike and he said they aren't meant to be taken seriously as reality driven stories. Just a more violent version of a cartoon, or maybe a puppet show. Anyway, careful on your way to grandmother's house, because there are a lot of Big Bag Wolves in the wolrd, and one will surely bite you some day.
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