Alex Cross battles the most ruthless and powerful killer he has ever encountered: a predator known only as the Wolf.
Alex Cross's first case since joining the FBI has his new colleagues baffled. Across the country, men and women are being kidnapped in broad daylight and then disappearing completely. These people are not being taken for ransom, Alex realizes. They are being bought and sold. And it looks as if a shadowy figure called the Wolf-a master criminal who has brought a new reign of terror to organized crime-is behind this business.
Even as he admires the FBI's vast resources, Alex grows impatient with the Bureau's clumsiness and caution when it's time to move. A lone wolf himself, he has to go out on his own in order to track the Wolf and try to rescue some of the victims while they are still alive. As the case boils over, Alex is in hot water at home too. His ex-fiancee, Christine Johnson, comes back into his life-and not for the reasons he might have hoped.
Description:
Alex Cross battles the most ruthless and powerful killer he has ever encountered: a predator known only as the Wolf.
Alex Cross's first case since joining the FBI has his new colleagues baffled. Across the country, men and women are being kidnapped in broad daylight and then disappearing completely. These people are not being taken for ransom, Alex realizes. They are being bought and sold. And it looks as if a shadowy figure called the Wolf-a master criminal who has brought a new reign of terror to organized crime-is behind this business.
Even as he admires the FBI's vast resources, Alex grows impatient with the Bureau's clumsiness and caution when it's time to move. A lone wolf himself, he has to go out on his own in order to track the Wolf and try to rescue some of the victims while they are still alive. As the case boils over, Alex is in hot water at home too. His ex-fiancee, Christine Johnson, comes back into his life-and not for the reasons he might have hoped.
**
From Publishers Weekly
Unlike the original Big Bad Wolf, Patterson's newest and arguably most fear-inspiring villain maims, slaughters and kidnaps victims for purposes of sexual slavery. Rumored to be a Russian émigré, this shrewd predator has made crime pay so fabulously he sits atop an empire capable of accomplishing any nefarious purpose, including attacks on the homes of high-ranking FBI officials. Despite having just joined the Bureau, series hero Alex Cross winds up hunting the Wolf, which puts his family in peril. Meanwhile, his former girlfriend decides she wants custody of their young son. Patterson, a master at suspenseful twists and turns, keeps the action non-stop by constantly shifting among Alex's first-person tribulations and punchy, objectively told sequences focusing on Wolf, several ultra-wealthy computer chat group slugs who are taking The Story of O much too seriously, and the chat group members' struggling victims. The effectiveness of these quick changes is heightened by the use of dual readers. Theater and TV actor Fernandez has a warm, rich voice that provides Cross with a soulful dimension often absent from the author's prose, and O'Hare (a Tony Award winner for the hit play Take Me Out) handles the other chores, satisfactorily running the gamut from Russian-accented growls to effete simpers. Their all-pro rendering of this smartly paced thriller almost makes up for the fact that major plot strings are left tantalizingly untied.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Alex Cross finally took the plunge at the end of Four Blind Mice (2002) and joined the FBI. The training is a little beneath Cross, who has spent years working with the FBI on the toughest cases, but he dutifully attends classes until he's pulled out to consult on a case. Wealthy women have been disappearing around the country. The latest, a judge's wife, was snatched at a shopping mall. It appears these women (and soon several young men as well) are being abducted and sold to people who have "selected" them and paid a hefty sum. The man behind it all is a Russian known only as the Wolf. Cross gets a break when one of the buyers releases the woman he paid to have abducted, but when they track him down, they find he's committed suicide. Then a major bombshell in his personal life distracts Cross from the case: his ex-girlfriend Christine, the mother of his youngest son, has reappeared, and she wants custody. Cross' first major case with the FBI will have readers on the edge of their seats, swiftly turning the pages to the exciting showdown. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved