Cross Country

Author: James Patterson

ISBN:

Good but no great

Reviewed by Kevin Hayes ( khayes2009 )

`Cross Country' puts Detective Alex Cross on the most dangerous case of his career. A hitman for hire known as The Tiger has been killing and butchering whole families in Washington DC and this leads Cross to Africa where he is completely out of his territory and he can trust no one.

I've been a huge fan of the Cross series for many years, having read all of the books numerous times and although this is a very gripping and exciting read with not one slow chapter, it isn't up to the usual high standards that I'd expect from the series as they are usually the best of the best when it comes to Patterson novels, this however was just good, nothing special.

The African setting was a welcome change though as it took it away from the usual DC background, giving a chilling a disturbing insight into what life in Lagos, Nigeria and Sierra Leone must be like. There were too many near-deaths for Cross in this book which got to the point where it became ridiculous (literally once every couple of chapters).

His love interest in Africa seemed a little unnecessary too, making it seem like Cross will fall for any woman he works with, and felt like just a bit of a story-filler to bulk up the content of the story. Another thing I didn't like about this book is that it felt like it was going to finish 3 or 4 times before it actually did, making me think that Patterson couldn't make his mind up on how to end it so just dragged it on, as the last 50 or so pages could have been cut down a lot.

Although there are a lot of flaws with this one, it is still a very tense and exciting book that can be read in no time at all (I finished it in 2 sittings). Overall it is a very good thriller but is just not at the high quality level of other books in the series such as Along Came A Spider, Kiss the Girls and even the more recent Double Cross. I'd definitely recommend it to Alex Cross fans as it is a decent addition but just don't except anything spectacular.

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