Patterson's name on the cover virtually guarantees a spot on the best-seller lists, and there's little doubt that his latest will find a home there as well. Take-no-prisoners suspense reigns supreme as Patterson's popular hero, investigator Alex Cross, returns in a genuinely scary adventure. Alex's old nemesis, psychopath Gary Soneji, is dead set on killing Alex in the ugliest, most terrifying way he can devise, but first, he's decided to play a game of cat and mouse with his intended victim. In Europe, a sadistic torturer dubbed Mr. Smith is on the loose, and if Soneji is the king of cat and mouse, Mr. Smith is the grand high emperor. Elusive and terrifying, he performs autopsies on his living victims. FBI Agent Thomas Pierce has been assigned to the Smith case, but he's come back to America especially to help Alex track down Soneji. Meanwhile, widower Alex has met a new lady who has his heart singing. His kids adore her, and he's almost persuaded himself that he could be in love when Soneji intervenes and turns Alex's life upside down. But Alex has a few tricks up his own sleeve and can match wits with even the cleverest serial killer--if he can just figure out which serial killer. Suspense, terror, in-your-face action, strange (and sometimes confusing) plot twists, and a darkly explosive ending will have readers lining up, eager to claim their copy of Patterson's latest sure-to-be-a-hit page-turner. It won't hurt that Paramount Pictures will release a film version of Patterson's Kiss the Girls in September. (Reviewed Sept. 1, 1997)

Archly improbable multiple psychokiller tale featuring Patterson's dignified Washington, D.C., detective, Alex Cross (Jack and Jill, 1996, etc.). Gary Soneji, the hyperactive bad boy who escaped from prison at the end of Along Came a Spider (1993), has AIDS. Before he dies (or even suffers any of the disease's ghastly symptoms), he wants to avenge himself on Cross, who helped capture him. After creeping into the Cross family cellar and ominously rifling the laundry, Soneji, who (we learn) developed a psychotic fixation with trains when he was denied a Lionel set as a child, departs on a series of cinematic massacres along Amtrak Metroliner stops, leaving drops of Cross's blood as clues. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, another psychokiller, calling himself Mr. Smith, is literally cutting a swath through Paris and London, pursued by the fanatically methodical, ponytailed FBI profiler Thomas Pierce. Cross doggedly pursues Soneji to New York, pausing between crime scene visits to romance recently widowed school principal Christine Johnson at the Rainbow Room. Patterson's soulless, breathlessly plotted exercise in bait-and-switch manipulation reaches the first of many false climaxes beneath Grand Central terminal, where Cross apparently kills Soneji. A few pages later, the widower Cross and his family are nearly murdered by a masked man claiming to be Soneji. Enter twitchy Thomas Pierce, who must make one too many references to the Twin Peaks TV show before revealing that he and Mr. Smith might be the same man. A bulky pack of unsolved plot puzzles and ludicrous butchery, ending in a shameless cliff-hanger. Having reached the peak of his popularity, Patterson is spinning his wheels. ($1,000,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild main selection; author tour)"