Rating: 
Summary: ...and frighetened Miss Muffit away.
Review: James Patterson has officially become this 19 year old's favorite author. After reading Hide & Seek, Along Came A Spider and currently engrossed in Kiss The Girls I'd have to say the contrast of Gary Soneji and Alex Cross kept me from a few school readings I should have done. Alex Cross PhD has become my new Psychology professor with his series. Patterson's layout style of to-the-point chapters gives you a shock just when you need it. Without losing you in the words he lays out the picture perfectly for you and never has to retreive you from the lost world. Just when you're guessing about a character they're right there for you to catch up on. On the rare occasions I put down Along Came A Spider I never felt confuesed or in the dark about the characters. Thank you for this slip in my schoolwork Mr. Patterson when's the next one coming
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating
Review: One of the best books I have ever read. Very clever
Rating:
Summary: Patterson is a good story but....
Review: The plot of this story is extremely strong, and will keep you
interest until the last word. The only drawback to this piece
of work is that there seems to be a strong "black and white"
line in the characterization. It seems that each character
is immediately defined as being black or white. It creates
a ripple in the flow of the story and detracts from a story
line that will otherwise engulf you.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, kept me on the edge of my seat -- Terri Odeneal
Review: This was a nice suspenseful mystery, charactors were not necessarily believable but if you can suspend your critical faculties, it kept you glued to it
Rating:
Summary: Fast paced well thought out mystery
Review: I have been a loyal fan of James Patterson. He researches his facts when dealing with real life situations. He makes you feel something for each character introduced. The feeling may be pity, disgust or confusion, but you always have some kind of feeling for his characters.
His story starts out at a crescendo, ebss and slowly builds up to the main story line. His descriptions make you feel as if were actually at the window of the situation looking in.
He brings you up and down with each step of the moment. Most of all his storyline is plausable. Mystery is always what counts, but you must have a solid ground from which to start and he does. This book should be read by all who not only enjoy a good mystery, but characters which you can truly care about.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book with a mediocre ending
Review: Great thriller throughout with some unbelievable turns. With all the imagination used to create the body of the book you would think the ending would have had more development and forethought. I could not put this book down and would not have guessed that after I turned the final page I would be so dissppointed. I want to be suprised at the end, not fed the predictable
Rating:
Summary: This book will save you a trip to the manicurist!
Review: I don't know what you like to read when you're in the process of moving and starting a new life, and if you weren't addicted to books, you'd just go to bed and sleep when you had a chance; but for me it sure as heck isn't Proust. Picture books maybe. The captions in National Geographic magazines. And paperback mysteries. Something that keeps my attention off the big mess I'm in. _Along Came a Spider_ kept my attention all right, and also saved me a trip to the manicurist. This mystery has been reviewed by every reviewer in the country, according to the blurbs attending the book. Most of the reviews included descriptives like "engrossing", "terror", "buzz", "harrowing", "thriller", "brisk", "revel", and "powerful". Yeah, yeah, yeah, and it really *was* a pretty good mystery, too, despite a couple of major details that didn't seem to fit quite right, and despite the fact that the book was yet another about a kidnapping, child-molesting sociopath with a genius IQ. Read 'em and weep. I'll give it a B+, and a positive recommendation as an attention-grabbing book to read when you haven't got much concentration.<HTML>
Rating:
Summary: Formulaic plot with characters that could not possibly exist
Review: "Willing suspension of disbelief" gets a thorough workout in this book.
It is the story of (we are told) a serial killer so brilliant that he has offed 200 people in his career. His motivation, we are told, is that he wishes to be famous. For someone so prolific and fame-seeking, he has been remarkably unsuccessful in drawing attention to his previous crimes.
In an apparent change of career, the killer has decided to become a famous kidnapper, and he accomplishes this by posing as a math teacher for several months before kindnapping the children of some rich folks.
In the course of this story, the brilliant serial killer (1) kills a poor black family, hacking off the breasts of the women, (2) kidnaps the kids but does not intentionally harm them, and (3) holds up a McDonalds. One does not need to be an FBI profiler so see the inconsistencies in this criminal's behavior.
All of which makes for entertaining reading, except for the nagging suspicion that the author hasn't really given much though to this central character.
The hero is little better. We are told that he is (1) black (2) a street-smart cop with a heart of gold, and (3) a pyschologist with a Ph.D. who chooses to live in a bad part of town for reasons that remain unclear. In one bizarre scene, he notes that one of his children seems to be "overcoming his shyness" when the child blurts out a profanity in front of a guest. Amazingly, this street-tough cop/psychologist does not see fit to address his child's misbehavior. There is remarkably little rhyme or reason to this character. Credibility is further stretched when the subject is captured and brought to trial. In a scene that would even make Perry Mason blanche, the defendent is hypnotized in the courtroom to establish his insanity. Give me a break.
At another bizarre juncture, a cross is burned in the hero's girlfriend's front lawn, but the author does not see fit to follow up on why it happened or who did it.
In sum, the author has seen fit to cobble together an impossible plot with improbable characters in the hopes that the reading public would buy it.
Apparently they did, although I cannot see for the life of me why.
Rating: 
Summary: Mediocre
Review: Definitely not worth the time investment.
I don't read many thrillers--they're not my cup of tea--but as far as books in general go, this book was rather bad. Maybe all thrillers lack emotional depth and run along flat, cliché plot lines. Or maybe this was just a bad thriller. In either case, this isn't a book that I would recommend to any of my friends.
It wasn't necessarily _bad_, but neither was it particularly good.
There's a lot of unnecessary words in there. I could have typed up a plot synopsis of 500 words in half an hour, read it, imagined it all happening, and gotten the same enjoyment that I did reading 500+ pages.
The plot's on the cliché side. It's redeemed in part by the twist toward the end, which is nicely foreshadowed in the chapters immediately before it, but the location, the conflict and the resolution are all much too conventional.
The writing style's quick and clean, and the chapters are short, which makes for fast reading. Thank God, because if the style had dragged any more than it did, I probably wouldn't have gotten through the book. I felt that I could've put the book down at any moment while I was reading and not felt the urge to pick it back up. It didn't scare me, it didn't move me, didn't make me laugh or cry... I felt mild curiosity at times, but that was it.
In a book this long, you'd think there'd be at least a sentence or two worth remembering. The kind of perfect phrase or chapter ending that makes you sigh and go, "Yeah, baby, now _that's_ good writing." There was exactly one sentence in the entire book that made me stop and read it again, and that was "Dreams are as powerful as the real world to our nervous systems." And that's only because I've been having some crazy dreams of late and experienced that statement first-hand. It's good enough writing, but not anywhere near excellent.
_Along Came a Spider_ isn't a bad book. But it's mediocre, and in a world where time equals money, that's enough to get it buried alive.
Rating:
Summary: Average thriller, over the top plot complete with holes
Review: I gave When the Wind Blows a horrible review and had only read one other book by Patterson, which was a terrorist thriller of average quality, when I decided to bite the bullet and try this one out.
Obviously some people really like his style and stories, so I figured this one, made into a movie, couldn't be THAT bad. I wasn't too disappointed, in fact, since I expected it to stink, I was actually a bit impressed.
If you're into chick written mystery thrillers, then this one will probably appeal to you. I tend to enjoy more meaty offerings, Caleb Carr's great historical murder thrillers come to mind and Scott Turow's mysteries (lawyer based). These types of books really get into the characters and don't rely so much on the "hyper" plot with out of the world, head line grabbing stories.
This book makes the same mistakes that I found in the decent thriller Absolute Power, in which stuff happens that really could never happen. I understand that is one of the points of certain types of fiction "Blockbuster" fiction, if you will, but it doesn't have to be so over the top.
In any case, this one's a fairly quick read, and not a total let down, as for those that give this book the kind of glowing "best novel ever" type reviews, well, I don't believe those people have read much fiction.
The cover of the paperback copy I read of this title had a glowing endorsement by Nelson DeMille, who is a superb writer, I'd recommend all his books before going to this series, but if you're a quick reader with lots of time, I'm going to give this an okay recommendation.
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