Patterson, James – ALONG CAME A SPIDER

[LJ Roberts]

ALONG CAME A SPIDER (Police Procedural/US/Cont) – Poor Patterson, James – 1^st in series
Warner Books, 1992- Paperback

The daughter of a famous actress and son of the secretary of the Treasury has been kidnapped. The boy's body is found and the kidnapper demands that Detective Alex Cross be the one to deliver the $10M ransom. The money is taken, but the girl is not returned and Alex joins forces with Jezzie Flanagan, the supervisor of the Secret Service, to find the kidnapper.

I had some real problems with this book. The alternating first person, third person telling of the story was distracting. Alex seemed the whitest black man I've ever read, and there was next to no character development. There were hints of the mastermind fairly early in the story, the kidnapper was stereotypically evil and the very ending was unrealistic. The story did move well for about the first half, and then I found myself getting bored. Judging by his popularity, one can only assume Mr. Patterson's writing improved radically after this book.