I stayed up until 2 a.m. last night (technically, this morning) reading James Patterson's Cross Country, the newest installment in the Alex Cross series. James Patterson is famous for his short chapters, at least as far the Cross books go. I kept telling myself, "One more short chapter. One more short chapter." The next thing that I knew, it was 2 a.m., and I was done with the book. As a result, I have spent most of today in a sleep-deprived fog. The fog was so thick that, at one point, I almost poured a glass of tea in the washing machine, thinking that it was the sink. Yeah, that wasn't one of my finer moments.Nevertheless, I don't regret my late night reading marathon. The book was good. However, in my opinion, it wasn't as good as the other Alex Cross books. For starters, James Patterson did away with most of the character development. You pretty much had to have read all the other books from Along Came a Spider forward to know anything about Alex Cross in this book. Otherwise, you would spend the whole book asking yourself, "Why is everyone calling Alex a doctor? I thought he was a cop," not to mention, "Why does he have friends in the FBI? Why does he keep calling himself the Dragon Slayer? Who killed his wife? Why does he call his grandmother Nana Mama?" and, my personal favorite, "Who the heck is this Gary Soneji and Kyle Craig that he keeps referring to?" I already know the answer to those questions so I was okay with the near absence of a back story, but someone just picking up this series may not be.
The book was also missing a big "Whodunit." Not to give away the plot line or anything, but the story was less about solving a mystery or catching a serial killer than it was about how many times Alex Cross was going to get beat into a bloody pulp in the process of doing those two things. Still, the story kept me so mesmerized that I was willing to forgo sleep to finish it.
I've only read one page of my next book, Dean Koontz's Your Heart Belongs to Me. One page was all I could manage in the cold, dark interior of my car in the Walmart parking lot earlier tonight. While I hope the book is every bit as good as Cross Country, if not better, for my own sake and for the sake of my washing machine, I hope it takes me a little longer to get into.
