A tad far-fetched plot, perhaps, but this story certainly serves up timely issues and, dare I say, is a very enjoyable entry in the Detective Alex Cross series (this is the 26th, and I've read most of them). Alex and his Washington, D.C., chief of detectives wife Bree take center stage throughout, with their kids and Alex's feisty Nana Mama mostly in the background - which is just fine with me (they're very cool characters, but I don't want them hogging the spotlight).This one starts off with a bang - literally; a 69-year-old California senator is killed by a sniper's bullet. Bree is charged with finding the culprit - with the threat of losing her job if she fails. At the same time, a well-known assassin is spotted in the area, so the FBI and Secret Service start to dig in as well. The nation's new president - who took office when the former POTUS died of natural causes - asks Alex to get involved. Shortly thereafter, sniper killings take the lives of other government bigwigs, leading officials to suspect there's a far, far grander plan afoot. But what is it, who's behind it and how can it be thwarted?
The investigation leads Alex all over the place, and at virtually every stop he arrives at remarkably insightful conclusions while the baddies execute extraordinarily complex actions using intricate disguises to avoid capture. As this drama ensues, Alex is intrigued by a female private patient who intrigued me as well, but in the end she seemed to have no purpose other than messing with Alex's head (which I suspect will serve as fodder for another book). But the assassin chase is exciting, life-threatening and, as I mentioned earlier, timely - and readers get a bit of a surprise in the end (well, at least I did). All told, another solid entry in one of my favorite series.
Target Alex Cross by James Patterson (Little, Brown and Co., November 2019); 432 pp.
No comments:
Post a Comment