James Patterson is a
gifted storyteller and a talented marketer. He keeps all of his
paragraphs brief. His chapters are always two or three, never more than
four, pages long. He designed all of his early covers with big, bold
titles along with his name in big, bold type (a design which has
revolutionized the covers of thrillers). He has so many
story ideas
that he often collaborates with other authors to get these stories
written, published, and to the public. Patterson’s name regularly
graces an average of three to four new titles per year. And it all
started with Alex Cross, Patterson’s brilliant criminal profiler and
star of more than a dozen novels from “Along Came a Spider” to the
latest, “Double Cross.” In “Double Cross,” Alex Cross is wooed by a new
love, and by his old obsession of solving crimes, to leave his new
private practice and returning to police work. Of course, he has little
choice because one killer is murdering people in a very public way and
daring Cross to catch him. Meanwhile, former friend-turned-enemy Kyle
Craig, a.k.a. The Mastermind, has escaped from prison and has Alex
Cross in his sights. If you like Patterson and his Alex Cross novels,
this one won’t disappoint. Patterson has more than proven himself a
master of suspense, mayhem, and action, but his true marketing genius
is more carefully crafted in the character of his star, Alex Cross.
Cross is a truly likable character. He loves his children and his
grandmother who lives with them. He has had several love interests,
whom he loves, but Cross loses them because he is so often caught in
the crosshairs both literally and figuratively. He has killers after
him, which keeps readers interested, but the genius of Patterson’s
Cross, which helps readers identify with him, is that the character
loves his work. It is this love for his job, or rather the demands of
his job, that creates the real inner turmoil for Cross. He loves his
family but his work keeps calling him away; he loves the work but he
misses his family. In this work-busy, career-oriented
world, many
readers can identify with Cross’ conundrum of work-
time encroaching on
family-time. Alex Cross is a guy who resembles a lot of folks but with
a
life that often has him saving the day. Talk about marketing genius.
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