Book Review: Kiss the Girls

Book: Kiss the Girls (Alex Cross book #2) by James Patterson

Rating: 2 stars

Review:

Out of all the Alex Cross books that I've read so far, this one was a disappointment for me. This book was longer than it should have been, it started out strong but then hit a major speed bump and crawled along very slowly until it got to the lackluster ending. The story was boring most of the time while the rest was very dark, twisted and also boring.

In this story, high-profile Washington, D.C. Detective and Psychologist Alex Cross had his hands full as he not only tries to track down two serial killers but also try to find his missing niece Naomi Cross who was abducted by one of the killers.

Cross had no idea the extent of the situation, he had only traveled to North Carolina with his friend and fellow Detective John Sampson to see if he could find his missing niece 21 years old Naomi Cross, a law student at Duke University. She had been missing for four days before the local authority contacted the family. But once he arrived in North Carolina, Cross and Sampson got a frosty reception from the local police. It appears that Naomi wasn't the only young woman that has gone missing and when the body of one of the missing was found in the woods, they showed up on the scene with the local police but Cross got an equally frosty reception from the FBI who had taken over the case. He found out that there was a local serial killer called Casanova who has been abducting, raping, torturing and killing women. He seems to be collecting the women for some purpose.

With Sampson heading back to D.C., Cross was on his own and with no leads to follow and no cooperation from the authorities it was going to be difficult to find his niece. When another woman goes missing, 31 years old medical student Katelya "Kate" McTiernan he tried to put together clues and create a psych profile of Casanova but hard to do without a lot of information to go on.

It wasn't until his friend from the FBI, Special Agent Kyle Craig contacted him and asked him to work with the FBI that Cross was finally starting to get somewhere with the case.

Cross became aware of information about his niece as well as a second serial killer operating out of Los Angles when he read an article published by Los Angeles Times reporter Beth Lieberman. She had been receiving letters or diary entries from The Gentleman Caller and had been publishing edited versions of them.

Meanwhile, Kate had escaped from Casanova's house of terror but she was unable to assist the FBI and police. She had no idea where she and other women had been held and because Casanova wore masks there was no way of identifying him. The only information that she could give them was he was strong, very built and had blue eyes.

The Gentleman Caller was nearly caught by Alex but he was able to get away and was now in the wind. But searching the killer's apartment lead to clues to who Casanova might be. It was also becoming rather apparent that both killers knew each other and may also be working together.

The two killers seem to mirror each other, they abduct young women, rape and torture and kill them. However they differ in their methods Casanova likes to keep a select group of women for his harem while The Gentleman Caller seems eager for the kill.

There were three things that annoyed me about this book:

1) It was very slow moving.

2) Alex Cross was completely off his game and couldn't figure out anything. He made a lot of mistakes and it started to seem as if most of the time he forgot about his niece once he started falling for Kate.

3) Kate McTiernan.

I thought Kate was too perfect, she was so beautiful and smart that Casanova and dare I say Alex Cross were both immediately drawn to her. She barely had any residual trauma following her extreme torture from Casanova. Being so smart, she wound up turning into Cross's partner in tracking down the killers. Kate was a high profile victim with her abductor still on the loose why wasn't she either taken to some protective location or have officers guarding her home. Instead she was at home with no police protection but hey she had a black belt in karate and was looking to get another chance to take on Casanova.

However even with her skills, she was attacked and nearly beaten to death by both killers. She lived but what annoyed me was that she was seriously back to her usual beautiful fighting self. She only had one tiny dent to the side of her head but she was back to being able to not only fight but fight the killer who went after her for the third time. Seriously what couldn't she do.


Kiss the Girls was not a good read. The writing for this I hate to say was bad and it felt rushed and detached. The way this was written it was hard to care about anything that was happening in this book let alone the characters.