Going by James Patterson’s income, Alex Cross has been the most resourceful detective in the world for a while now. I suspect that it is the personal side of this “doctor detective” that endeared him to most readers. A sensitive family macho man who plays the piano to relax, watches animation movies with his children, treats Nana Mama with great affection, drinks beer with his super macho best friend since 10, spares time for community service, listens to women, and doesn’t shy away from love and emotion.
I read Patterson’s first two novels: Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. Both books are “relentless page-turners”. A no-nonsense reader could feverishly turn the pages of the action chapters and skip the pages of the monotonous romance chapters. The one feature that I enjoyed in these novels was Patterson’s references through which you can tell that he is a normal guy who reads John Grisham and watches blockbuster movies. I am glad to have read Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls because I might have discovered director Shankar’s source behind the famous moronic interrogation scene in Anniyan and director Gautham Menon’s inspiration behind Raghavan.
Patterson has an unremarkable writing style which suffers from excess of detail. He follows “show and tell” instead of “show don’t tell”. Stephen King not long ago called Patterson “a terrible writer” and I subscribe to that ideology. I would go as far to place Patterson just below Robert Ludlum, whose writing is taught as an example of how not to write. Both Patterson and Ludlum have good plotting and decent characterization skills, and would have greatly benefited with partnering with other writers, as long as they did not partner with each other. Patterson has been coauthoring books these days. Good for him.
To me Cross is a most dreadful narrator and an average detective. He is burdened with The Job chasing Gary/Soneji and craves for intimacy with beautiful strong-willed damsels in distress or distressing damsels. He yearns for the possibility that The Beast may be seeking Cross’ attention instead of genuinely pursuing his artwork. He constantly hears his colleagues and just about everyone else telling him that he must be crazy to understand The Monster like Eric Cartman dreams of people telling him that he is awesome and not fat at all.
The trouble is that neither Cross nor his creator take notice of his delusions. Patterson indulges Cross’ every fantasy and strokes his large ego like a mother desperate to please her overgrown brat. Patterson could teach Cross many things by reading to him a bedtime story written by Tana French called In the Woods.
Morgan Freeman’s Alex Cross is more impressive than Patterson’s. Perhaps because no one can play a wise African-American like Freeman. Or simply because Freeman acts better than Patterson writes.
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