Almost A Good Book    **

Having read all of the Alex Cross novels it is always with anticipation when I pick up the newest. This book starts out as well as any of Patterson’s prior stories. While taking characters directly from the headlines makes part of the story line more believable, I have to agree with some of the other reviewers that the mathematician as killer was hard to swallow.

My problem with the book is the ending. Up until the final encounter with the main antagonist, Kyle Crane, the reader is told how precise, cautious, and masterful this criminal is and has been. The final showdown does not match what until then has been a very cunning and calculating plot to kill Alex Cross. This is not a spoiler, we all know Alex survives.

Patterson, like Child, Connelly, and Crais, has become lazy in writing a book that fails to keep the reader completely satisfied.