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In Pattersonıs latest novel in his Alex Cross series, Cross has left the Washington Police Department and is starting life as an FBI agent. Meanwhile, across the USA, women are vanishing. They are being kidnapped to order in an enormous operation run by the powerful Russian gangster, the Wolf. As Cross starts investigating, he finds his family under threat yet again but this time, in a very different way. Is Alexıs new life going to be over before it has barely begun? James Pattersonıs novels are always fast and exciting, and THE BIG BAD WOLF is no exception. However, his recent books have been somewhat lacklustre and unfortunately THE BIG BAD WOLF is caught in this trap. Patterson creates possibilities for himself through Crossı new role in the FBI and his family problems, but he fails to develop them sufficiently. Events that would have been worthy of several pages, if not a whole chapter, are glossed over in a few minutes. Additionally, Pattersonıs writing is at time so clunky and tending towards the bathetic, you find it hard to believe that he is an established and skilled author. There is a particular scene, when the character Sphinx is being discussed, where the writing could come directly from a high school studentıs attempt at writing an adult novel. How Pattersonıs editors do not notice this is a mystery. The other thing that detracts from the novel is Pattersonıs narrative technique of lying to the reader. In a mystery novel, plot twists are expected and a mystery without surprises would be disappointing in the extreme. Jeffery Deaver is fond of them, but his twists do not blatantly mislead the reader. Agatha Christie was heavily criticised for her surprise at the end of THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD, but here, Patterson tells the reader many things that are false, and leaves the ending of the book open, ready for a possible sequel. Whilst I am, and probably always will be, a fan of Patterson, the quality of his writing is decreasing with each successive novel. The Alex Cross series started strongly some years ago, but Patterson seems to have lost his edge. He needs to get some new blood into the series and put more filling into his stories. A book cannot live on adrenaline alone and Alex Cross seems to be fast running out of steam.
Reviewed by Luke Croll, December 2003
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