Rating: 
Summary: Great at First...Then it stinks
Review: At first, I thought this was one of the best books ever written. I read the book constantly for the first day that I picked it up and all of a sudden it got to be the worst book I had ever written. Patterson reveals who Mr. Smith is, with about 150 pages to go and then the entire thrill of the novel is gone.
The case of Gary Soneji does carry the book. I give the first half 5 stars and the second half 1 star. So that gives me three stars. His next one (Pop goes the Weasel) is much better.
Rating: 
Summary: I loved it, even though he's going downhill
Review: This is robably my favourite Alex Cross novel. Although i cannot sya why. For this book is undoubtedly worse than the rest. there is little to no character development, the writing is far too oversimplified, the serial killer aspect seem a bit too much "quantity over quality", and Alex Cross is finally getting annoying. Besides all that though, this is my favourite Cross novel. I loved the parrallel way it runs, with the Gary Soneji plotline running alongside the Mr Smith killings. It's a really good two in one thriller. SOneji is back and bigger, more terrifying than ever. And Mr Smith brings a whole new meaning to the word "chilling". He is probably Patterson's best villain. There is a great thing Patterson does (hence turning the ending into a rather Agatha Chrisite-style denouement) in which for a while Cross is in hospital, and another investigator takes over the naarration of the story for a while. It's refreshing, and adds extra power to the story and final twist. It's good that Patterson decides the rid the book of Soneji after about halfway, because the Mr SMith side of it gets so complicated and complex, that the book, if it ran on two lines for the whole way, would be many many more pages long, and may have been criticised for the fact that he didn't decide to split it into two books. this is a real pageturner, with Patterson's trademark shortchapters which really keep you reading late into the night. (or early into the morning, to be more correct.). However, watch out Mr Patterson, much of what you've written from here on in is sliding to the "below average" mark.
Rating: 
Summary: waste of time
Review: I hate myself everytime I read a James Patterson book. Poor charater development and a plot that tries too hard. This book was a waste of my time and the only cure is to not read him anymore.
Rating:
Summary: Not my favorite Patterson book
Review: I was disappointed in this book although I am normally a fan of James Patterson. This events in this one were just too unbelievable and it seemed like the book was trying to weave too many improbable pieces of a puzzle together. Try some of his other works to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Alex Cross is NOT ten feet tall and bullet-proof?
Review: James Patterson attempts to continue writing a serial thriller about a serial killer and the old song that has kept him going thus far is beginning to sound like a broken record. Detective Alex Cross, forever on the chase for the bad guy finds his life is again haunted by the familiar serial monster, Gary Soneji. By this book, we have witnessed that Cross is forever a thirty-something widower of three years and his late wife dies of a different horrible circumstance in every story. His two children and grandmother, "Nana Mama" never age. Even his housecat, "Rosie" is inconsistent from one story to the next. No one ever gets older, but still time seems to pass.
It is not necessary to go back and read about all of Cross's other attempts to apprehend the elusive Soneji. Patterson has this annoying habit of dropping references in the current story about the past, just to make you think that you should read the others in order to understand what is going on. But the story has one saving creative grace. Although Patterson's theme seems repetitive and the villain seems immortal, we have suddenly come to realize that the great detective, Alex Cross is not. Patterson throws in a nice little twist that even surprises veteran readers like myself. But when all is read and done, dear reader gets the impression that his time under the reading lamp may have been better spent on other things. The story seems the same as the last. Once we figure out the Patterson story formula, we may nearly point directly at the villain from the get go. But don't you know that I'll certainly look for the next in this addictive series? I'm sure you will, too and we'll both hope that Patterson may create a new story that outshines each of his last ones.
Rating:
Summary: A complete waste of time and money
Review: This was one of the worst books I have ever read. As two other reviewers noticed, Patterson makes excessive and superfluous use of both italics and exclamation points. Very tacky, not to mention annoying. The characters were insipid and the plot was fragmented. I bought this book at the grocery store because I needed something to read. I would have been better off reading the instructions on my bag of rice.
Rating:
Summary: This book is dreck--don't bother.
Review: Someone told me this book was a real page-turner. I guess it is: since each chapter is about two pages long, it's easy to keep turning the pages - no challenges to low levels of concentration here. In fact the book is so devoid of description and so full of ridiculous superficial events that just about anyone could keep turning the pages. (Warning-I give away clues in the next few paragraphs.) The premise--such as it is--of the plot is that there are two psychotic serial murderers on the loose trying to kill the main character. I guess one maniac is not enough to keep our interest anymore. The author apparently is trying to "get inside the mind" of these murders by having the main character try to interpret "clues" from each of the crime scenes that will predict his next murder. These clues are completely absurd and trivial: the murderer could not play with trains as a child, and now he murders in train stations. I could go on, there are many more examples of such obvious plotting, but why bother-reading about them once was too much. So after the murder of several cops in their own homes (!) and some ridiculously gross murders--which we are thankfully spared all the details of--the murderer apparently dies. On to the next criminal. The other serial murderer also has the psychological depth of a worm. He, too, engages in inane and gross murders. This killer, though, is not the victim of a sadistic childhood, but a supposedly intelligent man obsessed with the language theories of--you guessed it-- Noam Chomsky. (I guess Richard Patterson went to college, because his narrative is sprinkled with references to a wide array of philosophers--although in referring to them, Patterson seems unaware that they have widely varying outlooks.) So the hero finally figures out that the killer's obsession with language-foolishly reduced here to discovering that the initials of each victim's name spell out a confession-is the key to the crime. None of that has anything to do with Chomsky's theories about language. All right, if that is not enough to keep you from reading the book, how about the ridiculous characterization of the hero-Alex Cross? Patterson tries to create an African American protagonist-I guess that is laudable-but very little about him seems authentic. Cross's ideas about race, some of his choice of words (referring to a portable stereo as a "blaster") and many of his thoughts and ideas seem more like what a liberal white man would say. A good writer would work harder at giving us a deeper portrayal. So, if you want to read a long, shallow, gory, poorly written book-go ahead-but I wouldn't want to waste my time.
Rating:
Summary: double trouble
Review: Another suspense filled listen by Mr. patterson. Having just finshed listening to the heart pounding "Jack and Jill" I immediately popped in "Cat and Mouse". once again I was gripped by the story and this audiobook also featured one of my favorite readers, Anthony Heald. Yes Soneji is back but there is another monster as well, named Mr. Smith. Both are killing people with no remourse, and both want to challenge Alex Cross to the death. there are a lot of twists and turns in this book and this time around, Alex Cross doesn't merely get a few cuts and scrapes but suffers much more. The audio production was again excellent; I really love the duel readers and added sound effects at times. The love story sub plot got to be a bit too sappy for me but hey Alex deserves a little fun as well. If I had to say anything critical about this book it would be that the ending was a bit too contrived. I would have liked to see a more fiery ending then the one in the book. All and all however book 4 in the Alex Cross series did not fail to keep me glued to my tape player. Now onto book 5.
Rating:
Summary: A Generous Two Stars for this Beach Book
Review: Friends and co-workers recommended James Patterson's books to me as exciting page-turners, and this is the first and only book I have read by him. There are several interesting features in this book, but for the most part, it was a disappointment.
The plot consists of a Washington, DC detective - Alex Cross - who is involved in two cases of serial murderers, and his attempts to catch the murderers. One of the murderers is Gary Soneji from a previous Patterson thriller, and the other killer is a Mr. Smith. Alex Cross lives in Washington, DC with his two children and grandmother - who is a huge influence on him. There are several clever twists and turns to the plot, which will not be revealed here, as well as a good deal of time spent on his home life and love life. The plot takes us to Europe and several locations in the eastern United States (At one point, they are on a stake out in the beautiful and quaint town of Concord, MA, which Cross refers to as "the dreaded stakeout in Podunk." I'm sure the folks in Concord loved that comment.).
The trouble with the book is with all the people getting killed and in danger, and all the tense confrontations with the two perpetrators, I was never really on edge or pulled into the action. The reason for this is the author treats some of the characters and victims in the book the same as his serial killers do - like just so much blood and bodies to decorate the scenery. In other words, a lot of people get killed in awful ways, but we do not get enough of a sense of sadness or outrage because we do not get to know very much about the victims. Also, we do not get into the head of the killers enough. Patterson describes the killers and what made them go berserk, but there is something missing, we are not really inside their minds. By comparison, Thomas Harris' books - especially Red Dragon - are more successful in treating the serial killer "genre." His detectives walk through the houses of the victims, and reflect on everyday homely items they see, like samples on the kitchen walls, and become affected by the individual lives lost, so the readers are saddened and scared by the terrible acts that are done. Also, Harris' killers are more believable because their backgrounds are more compellingly presented. In Patterson's book short shrift is given to the background of Gary and Mr. Smith. We know that Gary was kept in his cellar as a child, but we do not feel the terror and anger he must have felt to drive him to do evil.
Another thing that Patterson does is not only switch between the first person and third person narrator, but switch between first persons - sometimes the first person is Alex Cross, sometimes it is Pierce - the FBI detective - sometimes it is Gary and sometimes Mr. Smith. This is somewhat difficult to keep up with, if you are new to this writer, and it does not work very well with the extremely short chapters (my edition has 451 pages, and 131 chapters). These brief chapters provided a stop-and-start feel to the book. As soon as I was getting involved in a part of the plot, the chapter ended, and I was thrown to another setting with different characters.
The last thing negative about the book: there was way too much time spent on the "love interest," i.e., the burgeoning relationship between Alex Cross and Christine Johnson - the dedicated recently widowed school principal. I'm sure that this furthered the development of Alex's and Christine's characters, but the effect was a bit on the soppy side. Other characters could have been developed more - Kyle Craig (another FBI man) who had some real reflecting to do by the time the book was over, and Sondra Greenberg of Interpol.
If you are a Patterson and/or Alex Cross fan, I don't think you will be very disappointed by this book, and I may give Patterson a second chance. If you cannot decide whether to read this book, check the excerpts on Amazon. I rate the book two stars as a beach book.
Rating:
Summary: I don't like Cross, OKAY?
Review: To date, I have never finished an Alex Cross novel. He is remarkably boring and too predictable. Sure he's a detective with a heart of gold (He drives buses for poor kids, he slaves in the soup kitchens for poor kids...heck!), but he needs to toughen up. Anyway. Cat and Mouse is jarring, slow, and unimaginative. I think Patty is trying to escape the confines of Cross seeing as though several recent novels (When the Wind Blows, Cradle and ALL) have been offered. Oh! And who could forget that Diary one. I finish every Patterson novel that doesn't involve Cross, but I am however going to pick up Kiss the Girls, because I have heard that that one is a real, genuine corker. I think I might even buy the Diary one in paperback, because I know for a fact I will finish it. Cat and Mouse...nah.
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