Name: Kill Alex Cross
Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Author: James Patterson

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Summary

Book Summary

The President's son and daughter are abducted, and Detective Alex Cross is one of the first on the scene. But someone very high-up is using the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA to keep him off the case and in the dark.

A deadly contagion in the water supply cripples half of the capital, and Alex discovers that someone may be about to unleash the most devastating attack the United States has ever experienced.

As his window for solving both crimes narrows, Alex makes a desperate decision that goes against everything he believes - one that may alter the fate of the entire country. Kill Alex Cross is faster, more exciting, and more tightly wound than any Alex Cross thriller James Patterson has ever written!

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Media Reviews

"A Muslim terrorist subplot to destabilize the federal government does little to redeem the tired main plot. Patterson neither sweats the details nor invests his lead with more than two dimensions." - Publishers Weekly

"With 70 million copies of Alex Cross titles in print and a film based on the series and starring Tyler Perry ready to roll, this is required for thriller fans." - Library Journal

This information about Kill Alex Cross was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Cloggie Downunder

a mistitled disappointment
Kill Alex Cross is the 18th in James Patterson’s Alex Cross series. The action starts immediately with the kidnapping from the Branaff School of Zoe and Ethan Coyle, the children of President Edward Coyle and First Lady Regina. This is followed very quickly by a cyanide contamination of part of Washington DC’s water supply and the apparent suicide by cyanide ingestion of a Saudi couple in a hotel room. While Alex Cross manages to question a suspect involved with the kidnapping, he is kept out of the case for the vital first 24 hours. He only learns some time later of communication from the kidnapper: no ransom, just a personal threat to the President. Patterson gives us an interesting, if perhaps a bit clichéd, perspective on life in America from the viewpoint of a Saudi terrorist. As well as the cyanide contamination of the water supply, Patterson touches on Sarin gas and Semtex explosive in Subway trains. Alex Cross seems a bit arrogant first off, but shows hints of the character we came to love in earlier books. The plot, however, is rather anticlimactic, the kidnapper is a lamentably shallow character, and much of the dialogue is wooden: “Tell me what’s happened, Ron,” the president commanded Director Burns. “Tell me everything, right now.” How Cross & co actually located the children is skimmed over; Cross is not involved in the terrorist aspect at all, and this seems to fizzle out; and as for Kill Alex Cross, nothing is mentioned of this until 17 pages from the end. This novel still has Patterson’s trademark short chapters, and there is liberal use of exclamation marks, but it feels like Patterson isn’t really interested in Alex Cross any more, like he’s not putting much effort into a hero who has made him a lot of money and has (or, rather, had) a large following. This mistitled instalment of Alex Cross is a disappointment and not even close to the quality of the early titles.

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Author Information

Biography
Books by this Author

James Patterson Author Biography

James Patterson has created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today with his Alex Cross, Michael Bennett, Women's Murder Club, Private, NYPD Red, Daniel X, Maximum Ride, and Middle School series. As of January 2016, he has sold over 350 million books worldwide and currently holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers. In addition to writing the thriller novels for which he is best known, he also writes children's, middle-grade, and young-adult fiction and is also the first author to have #1 new titles simultaneously on the New York Times adult and children's bestsellers lists.

The son of an insurance salesman and a schoolteacher, Patterson grew up in Newburgh, New York, and began casually writing at the ...

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