Along Came a Spider, was written in 1993 by James Patterson. This book takes place in Washington, D.C. The main character, Alex Cross, is a detective on the police force and a psychologist. He is a determined, strong character who will never give up until he solves all his cases. This is the first book of the 32-book Alex Cross Series. The genre of this book being a thriller is a major understatement.
Two famous children, Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg, are kidnapped by their school teacher, Gary Soneji. Alex Cross and Secret Service agent Jezzie Flanagan embark on an entangling journey to find Gary Soneji and the missing kids. I found the plot of this book to be extremely complicated. Patterson had multiple storylines unfolding at once. Every chapter ended with a cliffhanger that sometimes wasn’t touched back on for many more chapters. Patterson added many plot twists that fooled me that I didn’t see coming at all. I enjoyed that because he keeps you on your toes. I also liked how the exposition wasn’t super boring. Patterson got right into it. He did start a little graphic of a fourteen-year-old’s body found with extremely disturbing things done to it, which caught me off guard, but hey, that’s Patterson for you, always catching you off guard.
While Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan were solving the case, a sparkling romance unfolded between them. Although I thought their story was compelling, I did feel that Jezzie was a forced love interest for Alex. Some of the dialogue between these characters didn’t feel authentic and made me cringe a little. “I reached out and we held hands. ‘Thank you, for the way you look,’ I said. ‘You look beautiful.’ ‘I did it just for you.’ Jezzie smiled. ‘And I’d like to do something else for you. I’d like you to do something for me, too.’ And so we did one another” (250). This was a very hard part of the book for me to read and I was extremely uncomfortable during it. It just doesn’t flow right or feel genuine.
I found the main character in this book to be simply boring. He is a lonely man, whose wife died, who spends all his time focusing on his job, and who lives with his two children and grandmother in a semi-dangerous neighborhood in D.C. Patterson does go into his backstory a little bit, but it didn’t intrigue me. The character that enticed me the most that I couldn’t get enough of hearing from his perspective was Gary Soneji, the main antagonist. Gary Soneji is a “man with a plan”. His backstory is the saddest of all the characters. He suffered from severe child abuse and was never given attention. Ever since Gary was a little boy, he had always been different from the other kids, he had been violent and was obsessed with a missing children’s case that was considered the crime of the century.
As a result, Gary decides he is going to commit the new crime of the century. Gary had everyone in the book fooled. He had killed over 200 people and no one had ever been able to stop him. Now he needed people to know who he was, he wanted to be the star. He had been planning to kidnap famous children for a long, long time. He wanted their fate to forever be unknown, so people were always thinking about him. He craved attention. He is a genius mastermind. No one knew his real identity, not even the people closest to him. They also didn’t know what he looked like because he is an expert at stage makeup and acting, so his looks were constantly changing. He seemed to have no loose ends, and the police were losing hope of finding the missing children. Until he had made a mistake, and it was a big one.
The main female character in the book is Jezzie Flanagan, a woman with a lot to prove. She was the first-ever female supervisor in the Secret Service. She could not mess up, because any mistake would penalize her to the extreme, just because she is a woman. She was in charge of the safety of Maggie Rose Dunne and Michael Goldberg. She carries that guilt heavily on her shoulders. Jezzie has a very hard time opening up to people and trusting them, which made Patterson write her as Alex’s love interest, and her not focusing on her job as much seemed forced and not something that someone whose only goal is to get the children home safe would do. Patterson writes her as pretty and intelligent, but very aggressive. That was something I liked about her, that she was never afraid and would assert herself in any situation even if it was dangerous. She was my comfort character, but you can’t get too comfortable. With Patterson, you have to stay ready and never let your guard down. Right when you think something or someone is black and white, Patterson paints the canvas by throwing in a twist.
I would rate this book four stars. I very much enjoyed this book and never wanted to set it down. If I had to describe this book in one word it would surely be a page-turner. This book was so complex that I was practically jumping out of my seat waiting for the next plot twist. One thing I found weird was that there was a surprising amount of typos. I understand typos happen, but spelling characters’ names wrong was immediately eye-catching for me and shouldn’t happen to an experienced writer like Patterson. The typos, forced relationships, and uncomfortableness aside, this is an excellent book, and I would recommend it to everyone. Without question, you should give this book a read because the ending has me shocked for days. I seriously lost sleep over the plot twist of this ending. Now go and read this book!
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