Two of the greatest villains James Patterson has ever created in one book! Minutes after soldiers evacuate a Nevada town, a bomb completely destroys it. On vacation, FBI agent Alex Cross gets the call: the blast was perpetrated by the Wolf. A supercriminal and Cross’s deadliest nemesis, the Wolf threatens to obliterate major cities, including London, Paris, and New York. Then evidence reveals the involvement of a ruthless assassin known as the Weasel. Could these two dark geniuses be working together? Now with just four days to prevent an unimaginable cataclysm, Cross is catapulted into an international chase of astonishing danger – and toward the explosive truth about the Wolf’s identity, a revelation that Cross may not survive.

Ah, the era when Patterson wrote all of his own books. This book is *so* many steps above the dreck he publishes now, yet still not the greatest. I think my problem with lies in the complexity of the evil plot.  I didn’t really buy it in this context, perhaps because the book takes itself seriously.  You could have this type of plot in an Ian Fleming or Clive Cussler novel, because it is delivered with a wink and a nod.  Here, it’s meant as a "this could really happen" scenario. There’s just too many pieces and plots for everything to be controlled by one man (or woman). That being said, I was still entertained, and it was nice to visit with Alex Cross again. I may avoid most of Patterson’s newer books, but I expect I won’t be able to avoid finishing this series.

Other reviews:

REVIEW: London Bridges « reading comes from writing

Page count: 416 | Word count: 68,987

2009: Undead and Unemployed (MaryJanice Davidson)
2008: Caught Stealing (Charlie Huston)
2007: Die Trying (Lee Child)
2006: Skinny Dip (Carl Hiaasen)
2005: The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson)

Used in these Challenges: The Four Month Challenge; Random Reading Challenge; Countdown Challenge 2010; 2010 100+ Reading Challenge; 2010 Reading From My Shelves Project; Pages Read Challenge Season 2; Thriller & Suspense Challenge 2010; What’s in a Name? 3 Challenge;

Three years ago, lawyer John Henderson watched his four-year-old son tumble from a jetty into the lake outside their Washington home. In a terrible instant, a life all too brief and innocent ended. But it wasn’t drowning, the fall, or even some previously undetected internal defect that killed the little boy. Scott Henderson had simply, inexplicably . . . died.

Today, John is a different man—divorced, living a solitary existence in a beach house in Oregon, working as a waiter in a restaurant that caters to the summer crowd. Withdrawn from a life and past too painful to revisit, he touches no one and no one touches him. Then one night he receives a short and profoundly disturbing e-mail message from a stranger. It reads: I know what happened.

It’s enough to pull John back to Black Ridge—the one place on earth he’d hoped never to return to—in search of answers to the mystery that shattered his world. In this small, isolated Pacific Northwest community, populated in large part by descendants of the original settlers, the shadows now seem even darker and more sinister than when tragedy first drove him away—and the wind whipping down out of the primal forest can chill a man to his soul. It seems that bad things have always happened in this town of generations-old secrets—and are happening still.

The deeper John digs into his own past, and into local history, the more danger he draws toward himself . . . and toward his estranged and helpless family. And though he doesn’t know it, he’s not the only one who’s been called back to Black Ridge.

And that’s a very bad thing . . .

A twisting, relentlessly thrilling, and consistently surprising novel of psychological suspense, Michael Marshall’s Bad Things is a masterwork of chilling brilliance that will keep the reader guessing right to the final page. Bad things don’t just happen to other people. They’re waiting to happen to you, too.

I liked this, but I didn’t love it. It is a slow builder, which is fine, but I think I was looking for more of an underlying, subtle creepy feeling like I got from reading Rosemary’s Baby. I never felt like John was in real danger until the end.

John himself is an interesting character. He does what needs to be done without a lot of emotional wrangling, but it’s hard to get a good feel for why he is the way he is. Was he always this way, and just masked it when he was married? Or did the death of his son considerably change him? He’s very Jack Reacher-ish.

Overall, I liked the concept, and a rather complicated plot is wrapped up pretty nicely in the end. I just thought the execution could have been a little bit better.

Page count: 384 | Approximate word count: 96,000

2008: Key of Light (Nora Roberts)
2007: Born in Death (J.D. Robb)
2006: Dark Angel (Karen Harper)
2005: Godplayer (Robin Cook)

Used in these Challenges: 100+ Reading Challenge 2009;

It began with what seemed like an ordinary children’s birthday party. Friends and family gathered to celebrate. There were balloons and cake, games and gifts.

This party, however, was far from ordinary. It was held at Camp David, the presidential retreat. And it ended with a daring kidnapping . . . which immediately turned into a national security nightmare.

Sean King and Michelle Maxwell were not looking to become involved. As former Secret Service agents turned private investigators, they had no reason to be. The FBI doesn’t want them interfering. But years ago, Sean King saved the First Lady’s husband, then a senator, from political disaster. Now, Sean is the one person the First Lady trusts, and she presses Sean and Michelle into the desperate search to rescue the abducted child.

With Michelle still battling her own demons, and forces aligned on all sides against her and Sean, the two are pushed to the absolute limit. In the race to save an innocent victim, the line between friend and foe will become impossible to define . . . or defend.

Even though this is part of a series, it works pretty well as a stand-alone novel. In fact, I didn’t even realize until I started preparing for this review that I haven’t yet read the book before it, Simple Genius. I like Sean and Michelle, friends and partners who are still trying to figure out their boundaries and what exactly they are to each other.  The storyline here is one that isn’t easy to figure out on your own.  I had a couple of things figured out, but the whole picture was elusive until the end.  I think Baldacci does a good job of playing with the reader’s emotions… At first, I felt for the First Lady, who appears to be the long suffering wife of a Clinton-esque husband, forever cleaning up his messes.  At the end, my feelings about her did a 180.  In many ways, she was worse than the kidnapper.  Also, Michelle comes to terms with some of her own demons, and now maybe it’s time for her to really heal.  All in all, another winner from Baldacci!

Page count: 464 | Approximate word count: 123,193

2008: Grave Surprise (Charlaine Harris)
2007: Through Violet Eyes (Stephen Woodworth)
2006: Eveless Eden (Marianne Wiggins)
2005: King’s Oak (Anne Rivers Siddons)

Used in these Challenges: Spring Reading Thing 2009; The Countdown Challenge; 100+ Reading Challenge 2009; 2009 ARC Reading Challenge; 2009 Pub Challenge; The 999 Challenge;

Nicolas Creel is a man on a mission. He heads up the world’s largest defense contractor, The Ares Corporation. Dick Pender is the man Creel retains to “perception manage” his company to even more riches by manipulating international conflicts. But Creel may have an even grander plan in mind.

Shaw, a man with no first name and a truly unique past, has a different agenda. Reluctantly doing the bidding of a secret multi-national intelligence agency, he travels the globe to keep it safe and at peace.

Willing to do anything to get back to the top of her profession, Katie James is a journalist who has just gotten the break of a lifetime: the chance to interview the sole survivor of a massacre that has left every nation stunned.

In this terrifying, global thriller, these characters’ lives will collide head-on as a series of events is set in motion that could change the world as we know it. An utterly spellbinding story that feels all too real, THE WHOLE TRUTH delivers all the twists and turns, emotional drama, unforgettable characters, and can’t-put-it-down pacing that readers expect from David Baldacci-and still goes beyond anything he’s written before.

This was a slow starter for me, but once Katie and Shaw met, I was hooked. The conspiracy is deep, actually plausible, and I think it does raise some questions about what the “truth” of anything really is — especially in the digital age. I had a hard time respecting Katie, but I wasn’t unhappy with how things turned out. Not my absolute favorite Baldacci, but definitely a book he shouldn’t be ashamed of.

Page count: 416 | Approximate word count: 111,305

2007: Holiday in Death (J.D. Robb)
2006: All That Remains (Patricia Cornwell)
2005: I’ll Be Seeing You (Mary Higgins Clark)

A fire at the Cathedral of Turin and the discovery of a strangely mutilated body attract the attention of Italy’s special Art Crimes Department. For the fire is only the latest in a troubling series of arsons and break-ins at the cathedral, which houses what millions believe to be the authentic burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

A cop as well as an art historian, department chief Marco Valoni leads a crack team of investigators in a race to solve a crime he’s certain is about to shock the world. Someone is planning to steal the Holy Shroud, and Valoni’s only suspect—a mystery man who bears the same scars as the unidentified corpse—is currently serving out a sentence in a Turin prison.

Following a trail that stretches from the humble meeting places of the earliest Christian communities to the highest councils of the Vatican and the boardrooms that rule the world, Valoni and his associates will find themselves in the cross fire of an ancient conflict forged by mortal sacrifice, assassination, and secret societies with ties to the shadowy legend of the Knights Templars.

Spanning centuries and continents, from the storm-rent skies over Calvary, through the glories of Byzantium and the intrigue and treachery of the Crusades, to the modern-day citadels of Istanbul, New York, London, Paris, and Rome, The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud is a provocative page-turner of the highest order—one that will challenge you to believe.

I didn’t care for this book. I barely skimmed the last 80 pages.

The basic premise of the book is that these art crime detectives believe someone is trying to steal and/or destroy the Shroud of Turin after a string of strange happenings at the Cathedral where it is occasionally displayed. There’s 3 groups of people here… a group that are trying to protect the Shroud, a group trying to “reclaim” it, and the art crime detectives.

It was very slow, and really not very interesting. She tries to generate some interest in the history of the Shroud with flashbacks to the time of Jesus and then of the Templar Knights, but it still isn’t a particularly interesting history. And the time changes were very abrupt.

This book is touted as an “international best-seller”, but if that’s the case it was for solely one reason: The Da Vinci Code.

The only good thing about this book is that I can now return it to the library.

Page count: 416 | Word count: ? | Filed in: