|
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
|
James Patterson's award-winning and bestselling Alex Cross series is a combination of police procedural and psychological suspense that readers can't resist.
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson is available. Click for more info or to buy it now.
|
Related Links at MysteryNet.com
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Along Came a Spider by James Patterson
Features
Mass Market Paperback:
528 pages
; Dimensions (in inches): 1.18 x 6.78 x 4.22
Publisher: Warner Books; Reprint edition (December 1993)
ISBN:
0446364193
From Publishers Weekly
This second big winter thriller by a writer named Patterson (see Fiction Forecasts, Oct. 19) features a villain (a multiple-personality serial killer/kidnapper) whom the publisher hopes will remind readers of Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter, and a hero who is compared to those of Jonathan Kellerman. Unfortunately, the novel has few merits of its own to set against those authors' works. Hero Alex Cross is in fact a black senior detective in Washington, D.C., who is also a psychiatrist and has a facile but not entirely convincing line of sentimental-cynical patter. The villain is Gary Soneji/Murphy (read Hyde/Jekyll), who kills for recognition, and finally kidnaps the kids of prominent parents. Alex is soon on the case, more enraged by Gary's killing of poor ghetto blacks than by the Lindbergh-inspired kidnapping, and becomes involved with a gorgeous, motorcycle-riding Secret Service supervisor who is not what she seems. Soneji/Murphy is eventually captured--but can the bad part of him be proven guilty? There is even a hint at the end that he may survive for a sequel, though the reader has virtually forgotten him by then. Spider reads fluently enough, but its action and characters seem to have come out of some movie-inspired never-never land. If a contemporary would-be nail-biter is to thrill as it should, it urgently needs stronger connections to reality than this book has. Come back, Thomas Harris! 150,000 first printing; Literary Guild main selection.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
Good, but great?? I don't think so, August 25, 2003
Reviewer:
Suds Khetan
from Martinsville, NJ
I picked up this novel with high expectations after the release of the movie and the adulation from writers such as Demille on the back of the edition proclaiming it "masterful". Despite a good story and pacing, however, I didn't find much about this novel to live up to the hype it has received by come. Many of the major characters, notably the "mysterious" FBI agent Alex Cross falls for and the children kidnapped, seemed undeveloped and hollow and didn't add anything compelling except to serve as filler characters. The serial killer featured was the lone high acclaim I have...reminiscent to the portrayal by Edward Norton of a killer in the movie Primal Fear, the antagonist in Along Came a Spider is compelling and intriguing, forcing the reader to make decisions that set up the later resolution. The actually "twist" ending, however, was disappointing to me as well. Most endings have elements that were at least SOMEWHAT foreshadowed earlier in the novel. Patterson's ending, however, seemed to come out of left field and was completely arbitrary, with no connections to earlier in the story; in effect it didn't do the madman of the story justice. It isn't a bad read...but after Baldacci's The Winner, Along Came a Spider paled in comparison
|
|
|
|
|
