Along Came a Spider (Alex Cross #1) by James Patterson-502 pages (paperback)
I must admit that this is the first Patterson I've read. His writing is very simplistic and choppy (or at least it was in the beginning). The chapters and sentences are mostly very short. However, the story is pretty captivating, if somewhat harrowing. A man posing as a teacher at Washington Day private school kidnaps the Secretary of the Treasury's son and a daughter of a prominent actress. Doctor/Detective Alex Cross and his partner John Sampson are assigned as part of the team investigating the kidnapping. Alex Cross lost his wife to a ride-by shooting a few years before and now raises his two young kids with his grandma. A secret service agent involved in the investigation (Jezzie Flanagan) gets close with Cross and they fall in love. Not all is as it seems in this entire case (and other potentially related) cases, however. There are some interesting (if predicable, at times) plot twists. Overall, I liked this one alright and would give it 3 out of 5 stars. I may or may not read another book by Patterson.
