Return of the Spider by James Patterson

Description from Amazon:

Along Came a Spider introduced Detective Alex Cross to readers around the globe and delivered an unsurpassed rivalry: Cross—named the “human superhero” by The New York Times—versus Gary Soneji, who the Lexington-Herald Leader called the “most deliciously wicked character since Hannibal Lecter”. But that wasn’t their first meeting ...

Police discover that Soneji kept a murder book, Profiles in Homicidal Genius, detailing his transformation from substitute teacher to hardened serial killer—including clues that imply missteps that Alex Cross may have made a rookie homicide detective.

Now, Alex must retrace the steps of that long-ago investigation and face ... the Return of the Spider.

 

I decided to try an indie book again and picked one randomly on my Kindle. On the first page a character bashes a cat against a wall to see if they have psychopathic tendencies. Well that book got closed quickly. So I thought I’d see if James Patterson was still writing (and I say that tongue in cheek) mass-produced generic stuff. I used to love Patterson and thoroughly enjoyed his books until they became predictable as he churned them out so quickly. Even the Amazon description seems to have an error in it!

 

I didn’t read the back of the book, just picked it up as it was new. Oh dear. It seems it was a prequel of sorts to Along Came a Spider, which was written way back when. It doesn’t start off as a prequel though, so I felt cheated when I was expecting a new story and it lands up taking you back to how Gary Soneji started his reign of terror; and since we know how it ended, it felt like a backstory that was not necessary.

 

Sure there were clues here and there that were quite clever to have used to frame the guys he managed to make the fall guys, but there were also timing issues. If I remember Along Came a Spider correctly, Alex was a well-established detective by then, but according to this he was a rookie and making a lot of mistakes. Plus I think he mentioned an iPad in the 90s? Yeah, no.

 

I read it, closed it, and then said no more Patterson for me. Once upon a time they linked and had good ideas in them. Now they just follow a formula where it feels like drop-down menus to fill in the blanks.

Just finishing off a Michael Robotham and enjoying that one a lot more. Review up soon.