DOUBLE CROSS.

DOUBLE CROSS (Alex Cross #13) by JAMES PATTERSON.

BACK COVER BLURB: Just when Alex Cross's life is calming down, he's drawn back into the game to confront the Audience Killer - a psychotic genius who stages his killings as public spectacles in Washington, DC, and broadcasts them live on the net.

In Colorado, another murdering mastermind is planning a triumphant return. From his maximum-security prison cell, Kyle Craig has spent years plotting his escape and revenge. Craig prefers to work alone, but if joining forces with DC's Audience Killer helps him to get the man who put him away then so be it.

Both men are after the same detective - Alex Cross.

FIRST SENTENCE {Prologue: In Your Honour}: At the time of his formal sentencing in Alexandria, Virginia, for eleven known murders, the former FBI agent and pattern killer Kyle Craig, known as the Mastermind, was lectured and condescended to by US District Judge Nina Wolff. 

MEMORABLE MOMENT {Page 152}: She was pretty enough, in a suburban-cheerleader kind of way. Lydia Ramirez, according to her driver's permit. Seventeen years old, but he took no pity on her. Adolescents were the most wretched of all.

SOURCE: Ex-library stock.

MY THOUGHTS: Entertaining enough - if you are after a crime novel that isn't too taxing. A plot that plods along nicely. Snappy, short chapters. Characters that though they might have different names are basically the same as those in many of the authors other novels. In other words a typical James Patterson novel. And yet is it?

The thirteenth book in the series. Not that I'd let this put you off if you haven't read any of the previous books as whilst you might not know the background of Alex Cross Double Cross reads perfectly well as a stand-alone novel. It was for very different reasons that I found Double Cross a bit disappointing.

Dumb even for one of James Patterson's cop and with particularly pantomime style baddies (I almost expected one of the by-standers witnesses to one of the Audience Killer's murders to shout 'He's behind you). I'm afraid that not just implausible with characters like these the author came pretty close to insulting the intelligence of his readers.

And as for the sex scenes? Laughable is the word that comes to mind.

All in all a so-so novel with a so-so ending (albeit a blatant plug for the next book). You might have thought I'd have given up on the novels by this author but the fact remains that there is something (quite what I'm not sure) rather addictive about them.