Violets Are Blue (Alex Cross)
Fans of James Patterson's resourceful copAlex Crosswill be relieved  to find that he's back on familiar territory withViolets Are Blue--and,  more importantly, that this is one of the best Alex Cross thrillers yet.The malign criminal genius ofRoses Are Redis fixing to give  Alex a hard time once again. The FBI joins Patterson's dogged cop in a  particularly unsettling investigation: two San Francisco joggers have been  viciously murdered and are found suspended by their feet, with all the blood  drained from their corpses. And when further brutal deaths follow in California  and on the East Coast, Alex is forced to contemplate the bizarre possibility of  modern-day vampires, although his instincts point him to one of the many  sinister religious cults that flourish on the West Coast. Aided by Jamilla  Hughes, a streetwise young woman detective from San Francisco, Alex finds that  he has to crack not one but two impenetrable mysteries to stop further  bloodletting.Patterson fans expect the extremely concise, page-turning chapters (116 of them  here!), along with a reluctance to dawdle over details of his hero's personal  life, and both characteristics are firmly back in place. If you can resist  reading this one in just a few sittings, you deserve some kind of a thriller  reader's medal.--Barry Forshaw, Amazon.co.uk--This text refers to an alternateHardcoveredition.