Book Review: Along Came a Spider

I finally read my first James Patterson novel, somehow, and it’s the first in his Alex Cross series, 1992’s Along Came a Spider. Despite knowing of James Patterson, I knew nothing about his Alex Cross character, and I also haven’t seen the film adaptation with Morgan Freeman, which is surprising.

Patterson hooked me right away with his Gary Soneji psychopath character up against Cross, who incidentally, is a “cross” between a Washington D.C. police detective and a psychologist and doctor. I devoured the first 154 pages in one sitting. That rarely happens. Soneji wants to commit the perfect crime and the “Crime of the Century,” taking inspiration from the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in 1932. Cross, an African American man (worth highlighting because of what transpires later, and I think it’s worth highlighting that a prominent and popular fictional character was intentionally written as an African American), is hell-bent on solving a murder case involving African Americans in Southeast D.C., but they’re not seen as important as the two kids Soneji kidnaps: Maggie Rose, the daughter of a famous actress, and Michael Goldberg, the son of the Secretary of the Treasury. Goldberg dies shortly after due to a fluke medical issue while buried alive (with a breathing tube).

Like I said, the intrigue of Soneji, particularly when we learn he’s keeping up his normal suburban façade with a wife and kid in Delaware, and with the steadfast, stubborn Cross on his heels, was intriguing. Patterson’s writing kept the plot at a fast-clip. Then, admittedly, the middle chunk of the book slowed down for me because Soneji allows himself to be captured after a shooting spree and hostage situation inside a McDonald’s. He’s pretending to be a split personality case, where Gary Murphy, the suburban persona, is pretending to not knowing anything about Soneji. But as the reader, I figured that was all an act and part of his “master plan,” so, it was rather unnecessary to read such a long stretch of it. Later, Soneji escapes from prison, which I expected, and I think Along Came a Spider would have been an excellent book rather than a really good one, if it had cut to that sooner.

Additionally, a Secret Service member who was the supervisor over the two Secret Service agents guarding Goldberg, Jezzie Flannigan, and Cross begin a romantic relationship. She’s white, and Patterson shows a few vignettes and makes asides about how society isn’t ready for a black man and a white woman to date. Which is a fair story to tell because even in 1990, 63 percent of nonblack adults would be very or somewhat opposed to a close relatively marrying a black person (today, it’s 14 percent). Additionally, Cross’ grandmother who raised him after his parents died, is worried about him dating Jezzie because she’s white and she’s overprotective. But it was all for naught! The former doesn’t pay off at all, and the latter does but in an different way.

That’s because the story gets convoluted, in my humble opinion, by adding another psychopath to the mix: Jezzie herself, who along with the two aforementioned Secret Service members, realized Soneji was casing the Goldberg house, and when the kidnapping happened, they capitalized on it to get the $10 million ransom. They’re the ones who ushered Magige to some foreign country to keep her quiet. Aside from the fact of the scene where Jezzie acknowledged most of this when confronted by Cross being a tad ridiculous because she’s topless on a beach with him, I knew almost from the jump that that was going to be the big reveal. Jezzie was giving me all kinds of red flags. But a better twist is if she would have been good! Because then it pays off the interracial dating outcome, and it cuts counter to grandma’s worries, too, rather than her having a queasy “I told you so” moment. Plus, it takes the shine off of Soneji’s character to have him “compete,” as it were, with another psychopath and villain.

One villain, Soneji, and cutting from his capture to his escape would made for a crisper, stronger story. My other minor two criticisms of the book:

1.) The timeline doesn’t make sense to me. At some point, unless I missed it, we’re suddenly two years out from when the kidnapping occurred, and after everything unfolds, Jezzie is already being administered with lethal injection for her role in the conspiracy. There’s no way.

2.) Soneji, who could be boasting of course without a factual basis, claims to have killed 200 people, perhaps more, and many of those children. Likely, the most prolific killer in American history is Samuel Little, who has 50 confirmed murders and claims to have murdered 93 people. Throwing out 200 to make Soneji seem even more unstoppable and evil was a bit too outlandish for my tastes.

All of that said, I obviously devoured the book, even the middle section, because at least we got to see Cross’ psychologist expertise at play (and probably that’s the reason Patterson structured the plot as he did), and I enjoyed the introduction to the Cross character. I just wish he hadn’t gotten played by Jezzie. And overall, if the first in the series is supposed to get me excited to read more James Patterson and Cross books, then Patterson succeeded. I know he did some standalone novels prior to doing the Cross series, but my suspicion is that his future Cross books do get sharper and stronger, which is why I look forward to reading more of them.