Alex cross novels by James Patterson – book review

When you are awake at 4AM in the morning with not an inkling of sleep possible, its time to visit those long pending unread book list. Had long been avoiding James Patterson novels, ever since I read “Pop goes the weasel”. Interestingly it was a recommendation from my dad, who was given that book by his office colleague, hearing about my book reading habit. Not that it was a bad book, but felt the concept of serial killer was too much at that time to follow. Nowadays, with every other alternative thriller creation, be it on book form or on screen, dealing with more gore on a much casual note, that novel felt universal rated than “R”. Insomnia apart, the other reason to read his books was the tagline that he holds the Guiness record for being the #1 best seller in NYT list for the longest period. Not that NYT is the ultimate authority on good books, but definitely an accreditation for something interesting to read. When we used to buy Hindu newspaper, every Sunday, I would spend at least couple of hours, devouring the Times literary supplement, especially the column by David Davidar. Not that I was a die hard literary fan or something, there was nothing else to do on Sundays with hardly any program on TV worth watching and not having any other fun activity to do. From that time on, I always used to follow book recommendations in any form or from friends especially. Whenever someone raves about a new author that I hadn’t heard of till then, I would make it a point to read every single one of their creation to understand how consistent their works have been and naturally to satisfy the book reading curiosity.

I read 3 novels of James Patterson, based on his favorite detective Alex Cros, back to back. “Cross fire”, ”Double Cross” and “Jack & Jill”. To give a bit of background, Alex cross is an African American detective, who excels on psychiatry or profiling people, which helps him in reading the mind of a killer, his specialty being uncovering the mind of serial killers. Till the time I saw “Along came spider” on HBO, a movie adaptation of his Alex cross novel of same name, I never knew that the character was a black person. In fact, many a time when I read novels by Americans, I often imagine the character to be white and this one came as a real surprise. The surprise aspect being, a white author making bucket load of money, with his central character being from oppressed community and more than that, those books being on top seller lists!!! If you think the thought process will extend any further on the characterization, you couldn’t be much wrong. The general stereotype of a big family with a bunch of kids, an elderly grandmother, an oversized friend/colleague, their devotion to church are all thrown in and the setup is made. After learning about the color of the character, it all sounds very flimsy and forced. And the fact that they chose Morgan Freeman to play the role in the movie, was forever etched on my mind. I would’ve pitched in Denzel or at the least Will Smith for this role.

Coming back to the novels, each story seems to be a continuation of the other, with majority of the characters being same. This includes the villains as well, with most of them escaping from prison to destroy the life of the detective who arrested them, becoming more sinister and serial killerish in the process. Kyle Craig (master mind), Gary Soneji, Casanova are some of the villains whose name make a visit in almost every book of Alex cross. And every alternate book, he seems to have a different wife, with the former one either separated from him or killed. The grandmother continues to grow old and with each spouse a new kid is added to the family  as well. The investigative process is nothing more than jumping from one lucky guess to another, with the killer revealing himself/herself on their own in the end, leading to quick arrest. Jack & Jill was slightly different with the target being the president. There again, like his other novels, there are always  multiple killings/homicides that happen with different villains/killers involved, with each time the detective either getting help from the main villain in finding them or them getting killed by the main villain being the repeated theme. Of the several dozen books written by him, reading just 3 to make such statements is superficial at best. But makes one wonder, how come he churns out so many books in such short span of time, almost like an assembly line!! Have some more books to read from same author which might hopefully give a different perspective!!