Promise of a thriller

Hope to Die
James Patterson
Arrow
2014, pp 496, Rs. 299

In  1993, James Patterson introduced an edgy new detective in his book Along Came a Spider. The detective’s name was Alex Cross — a black police officer with a psychology degree and uncommon insight into the criminal mind. He was an immediate hit with readers. Since then there have been 21 more novels, culminating in his most recent, Hope To Die.

Hope To Die is actually a very bad place to start reading Cross’s adventures, for the simple reason that it’s a continuation of a storyline begun in the previous book, Cross My Heart. (Cross my heart and hope to die. Get it? Get it?) In that latter book, Cross and his wife, Bree, unravelled a series of bloody murders and kidnappings in massage parlours.

They were helped along the way by a mysterious stranger named Thierry Mulch. By the last quarter of the book, they had solved the murder-kidnappings. But then it turned out Thierry Mulch wasn’t a benign helper. He kidnapped Cross’s entire family and made him think they were dead (they weren’t, and Cross figured that out, too). Cross decided to go after Mulch. And just like that, the book ended.

Which is where Hope To Die begins, with Cross’s family still missing, and Thierry Mulch gloating over the situation he’s put Cross in. As the book gathers steam, Mulch is blackmailing Cross to commit crimes in return for the safety of his family. In order to drive his point home, he’s killing his hostages one by one.

But Cross isn’t one to take things lying down. Even as he somehow keeps Mulch off-guard, he’s on the criminal’s tail. The clues come up, Cross works them out one by one, slowly getting closer to Mulch and his sidekicks. But can he figure it all out before it’s too late?

I’ll say this for Patterson: his books are stuffed full of story. There’s something bad, or strange, or interesting happening in every chapter.

What’s more, everything is so over the top, you’re drawn into this world, the way you’d be drawn into a Salman Khan movie. Cross survives car crashes that are forgotten two chapters later. He gets guided by mediums. He chases down errant truck drivers by hanging onto their side windows and shooting through the glass with the other hand.

Mulch, on the other hand, is insanely efficient at covering up his tracks and killing temporary accomplices. He understands all about obscuring crime scenes and disabling security cameras, not to mention creating bombs and setting up life-support systems. He’s above all this morality stuff, and bodies fall like ninepins when he’s around. Most importantly for the plot, he also cold-bloodedly comes up with larger-than-life complications every few chapters.

Anyhow, step by step by step, Cross figures out Mulch and his dastardly plan. There are few strokes of luck here — Cross and his team of detectives work out every little bit through effort. The cat-and-mouse game continues over 400-plus pages.

The good news is that the story properly ends in this book, with no threads hanging. By the time you’re done reading, you’re virtually exhausted from all the action, and looking forward to the next Alex Cross adventure.

Half of the allure in these books is the character of Alex Cross himself. In Along Came a Spider, Cross was introduced as a tall, well-built man with loving children and a grandmother (his wife had been killed earlier in an unsolved shooting). He stood up for the underprivileged in the area he lived in, in Washington DC. He spent time at the local soup kitchen. He played a piano he’d installed at his house. And he was almost superhuman in his crime-solving skills.

He’s been refined in the years and books that passed. He’s been married again; his kids have grown up. But the cases have kept coming in, more and more convoluted and deadly than before. The cases are the other half of the allure — you simply can’t imagine this level of hyperactivity in real life. The crimes are grisly, the villains have all suffered terribly in childhood, and there’s never a single murder where a few will do.

Patterson’s style is sparse and workmanlike: he never gets in the way of the story. From time to time, instead of “showing”, he’ll just “tell” you that this or that character is feeling this way or that way. You don’t mind. You’re too focused on the unfolding story.

If you’re a fan of Hollywood movies with explosions and special effects, and don’t mind the occasional gore, you should give Patterson and Alex Cross a whirl. Only, don’t start with this book — start either with the first in the series, or with Cross My Heart, where the current storyline began. Just don’t expect Literature with a capital L.