Violets Are Blue
By James Patterson
Little Brown/$27.95
Now that Dec. 25 has passed, we're sure that thousands of you are holding bookstore gift certificates in your hot little hands. If you have any credit left after snapping up all the discounted 2002 calendars, you could do worse than picking up James Patterson's latest Alex Cross thriller, Violets Are Blue.
D.C. detective Cross returns to the top of the bestseller list with a pair of cases: one about as thrilling as Patterson gets, the other child's play for even the most clueless of sleuths. In the first, Cross is thrown into the fetishistic underworld of vampire role-playing when a pair of San Francisco joggers are found slain in a manner that suggests bloodsuckers at work. As similar murders continue in a seemingly random pattern across the country, Cross flies to and fro, working with friend and FBI agent Kyle Craig to stop a pair of killers whose brazen zeal for murder is matched only by their cheesy dialogue ("We're Immortal! We'll never die!").
The second case features Cross' arch nemesis, a brilliant psychopath known as the Mastermind. As Cross flounders about the country — alienating his family and lamenting his rather bad luck with women — the Mastermind plagues him with phone calls, threatening nearly everyone Cross holds dear (natch). A sort-of sequel to Roses Are Red, the Mastermind story line feels tacked on only to deal with loose ends. Even if you didn't read Roses, if you can't figure out the Mastermind's identity before Violets' midway point, we suggest you go back to Green Eggs and Ham.
But you've gotta give Patterson points: The man can write for the masses. The Florida author's page-turning chapters are ultra-concise — all 116 of 'em. His uncomplicated, no-frills approach to writing might make more advanced readers pray for a death by paper cut, but as long as everyone else reads something other than their morning cereal box, what's the harm?
—Kelli K
This article appears in Dec 27, 2001 – Jan 2, 2002.