Christ if he gave a brief description with each one it would probably add another 200 pages to his books. Detective Alex Cross takes on the case, certain that this is no ordinary bank robber at work; the pathological need for control and perfection is too great. Maybe I would not love them if I read them now or maybe I would and it’s just the later books that lost their way. This one was action packed throughout and leaves readers on the edge wondering how the plot was going to play out.

While Cross goes outside his normal practice and barters with the killer, the reader sees the true desperation in Cross's life. There they find a world of trouble, corruption, and secrets, all of them closed to outsiders like Cross and Mahoney. At the end of Cross My Heart, the 21st in the series, Cross had lost his entire family to kidnappings by a demented killer. Ben enlists their help, and the two Crosses introduce him to the hidden side of the idyllic Southern town. This is apparent as the story continues in the same vein and in the same JP trademark short chapters.There aren’t very many series that I have been reading for so long that I haven’t lost interest in either because the author lost motivation or my motivation changed over time. Alex Cross is happy, but his happiness is threatened by a series of chilling murders—murders with a pattern so twisted, it leaves investigators reeling. Minutes later, a huge bomb detonates a hundred feet above the ground and lays waste to homes, cars, and playgrounds: a town annihilated in an instant. This book however was more like the old James Patterson with thrills spills, good characters told in the usual style of short punchy chapters.

The body count is high, the tension the highest, and the two killers on the loose are watching every move their pursuers make.His family, which are usually an integral part of the books, include: Nana Mama (his 90-something Grandmother who raised him); Damon (his eldest son, away at College); Jannie (his daughter, in high school); Ali (his youngest son (just starting school); Bree (his second wife, we don’t count Christine, who was his fiancé and Ali’s mother), John Samson (his best friend since they were 10, and a fellow police officer), and Ava, a young street person who they wanted to adopt. I was giving up on the Cross series because I felt the writing was going downhill as the series progressed and I was not enjoying them as I did the earlier ones.