Cross Country

October 27, 2008
Bestseller Patterson’s 14th Alex Cross thriller doesn’t follow up on the plot threads left dangling in 2007’s Double Cross
concerning still-on-the-loose serial killer Kyle Craig. Instead, Cross, a Washington, D.C., police detective, takes on a very different quarry—a human monster known as the Tiger with ties to the African underworld. When the Tiger and his teenage thugs butcher writer Ellie Cox, her husband and children in their Georgetown home, Cross is devastated because Ellie had been his girlfriend in college. The Cox family massacre proves to be just the first in a series. Cross pursues the Tiger to Nigeria, where the profiler finds himself at the mercy of corrupt government officials who may be working with the Tiger. Spending less time than usual exploring his villain’s psychological backstory, Patterson delivers an atypical tale of James Bond–style revenge. Craig’s brief cameo toward the end suggests the series will resume its usual path in the next book.

Fans of Alex Cross will be pleased to see his story continue. Patterson's latest provides the familiar elements of murder and mystery but offers a new twist as the action moves from Washington, D.C., to the war-torn countries of Nigeria and Sudan. The audio presentation also attempts something a bit different with the use of two narrators. Peter J. Fernandez and Dion Graham deliver a clear, fast-paced performance and handle various accents deftly. Their voices, however, are so similar it's often difficult to make a sharp distinction between them. The production also includes music and sound effects, such as gunfire. The listener will have to decide if these add drama or create distraction. M.O.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine