Cross Country by James Patterson (he's getting worse)

[ubique]

I was a devoted fan of Patterson’s Cross series, in particular his earlier works titled on nursery rhyme themes (Kiss the Girls, Jack and Jill, Along Came a Spider and similar titles) and I normally looked forward to new releases with great anticipation. However, of late, his Cross stories have become disjointed, lacking coherence and almost amateurish in their use of prose and style.

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A Description From Publishers Weekly follows: 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.

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My problems with this Cross novel are multi-dimensional. I already mentioned the writing style as being disjointed and amateurish but most glaring is its lack of consistency. The writing style is divorced from that of previous Cross novels nor is it consistently maintained within this novel . One almost gets the impression that a ghostwriter or ghostwriters were involved.

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For me the entire plot was beyond believable. Alex seemed to have lost his good and common sense in this book. His decisions constantly put those around him in harms way - his friends, his family, colleagues are all deliberately targeted due to his poor decisions. His decision to fly off to Africa to pursue a killer in a foreign country with absolutely no government assistance seemed downright ridiculous considering that he is a bonded officer of the law and court........ the list is endless. The Cross character of this novel is an antithesis of the Dr Cross of previous editions.

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Also, Patterson’s decision to write Cross as a James Bondish character is a poor one insofar as the cumulative actions and effects are poorly accounted for. In the space of one week, Cross travels between Nigeria, Sudan, Sierra Leone and Washington and is repeatedly placed in situations where he is viciously beaten, tortured, interrogated, knifed, shot and thrown out of a third story window...... and yet the deleterious effects of these encounters don’t slow him down one bit. Heck, he doesn’t even get jet lag. Totally unrealistic.

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So, in short, avoid this book like the plague.

[MaryF57]

Don't know if my sources are correct but someone told me that Patterson himself no longer writes the books but a team of writers produces his "brand" under his name..if so, this could explain the decline in writing style!

[ubique]

Well - I guess that would explain it Mary - this one looks like it was written by committee.