"London Bridges" by James Patterson (Thriller, spoiler warning)

This is another one of Patterson's stories about FBI agent Alex Cross.


This novel take Cross into a realm in which the crimes are, in a sense, larger. The criminals he's trying to track down this time around are not just committing murders of individuals. They are threatening large-scale acts of terror, in which a lot of people could be killed at one stroke.At the novel's beginning, a small town in America is destroyed. Literally reduced to rubble by a powerful explosive. This does not happen until a group of people, pretending to be U.S. army soldiers, forcibly evacuate the town. The terrorists don't actually want to kill people.


At least, not this time - this is just to serve as a warning for what will happen next.


The mastermind behind the scheme is someone who goes by the name of "The Wolf." The identity of The Wolf is a mystery, that gives rise to much speculation. Is The Wolf male or female, what is The Wolf's motivation...there are a lot of questions about this mysterious villain, but few answers to be found.


The main plot is, in some ways, a typical terrorism-type plot. After the "warning" incident, law enforcement agencies are told that something far worse will happen - terrorist attacks in America, England and France are all planned. These will come about if certain demands aren't met, which include the payment of a large sum of money and the release of various criminals from prison.


The governments of the nations involved do not wish to be blackmailed in this way, and Cross and his colleagues end up making a frantic effort to try to get to the bottom of the conspiracy and bring the Wolf to justice.


But the Wolf is very smart, constantly using intermediaries and deliberate ruses to throw the police off the trail and make them waste time. This makes Cross frustrated.


As is often the case in Patterson's novels, different parts of the story are told from different points of view. We have some of the story told in the first person from the vantage point of Alex Cross. Then other parts of the story are told in the third person, from the points of view of the villains.


Incidentally, not only does Cross have to fight the Wolf, but it turns out that the Wolf has in his employ one of Cross's old enemies - The Weasel. I guess Patterson has a liking for animal names for villains, or did during this phase of his career.


The scenes told from the points of view of The Weasel or The Wolf are riveting for there sheer brutality. The Wolf is one hell of a mean fucker, even by the standards of Alex Cross novels. And his use of the Weasel, along with some of the things he says, seem to suggest The Wolf has something personal against Cross, as if he's tempting Cross, or leading him on.


But I'm not sure if that ever gets explained adequately. As a matter of fact, my only major beef with this novel is the lack of a clear resolution to a lot of the storylines - it seemed as if near the end, Patterson wanted to end it with even more twists and turns that would lead to confusion about who The Wolf really was, and whether the police had found the right person or not. I did some net-surfing and found that I'm not the only reader who felt this way about the book's ending.

But, all in all, most of the book is still an exciting, riveting read. Patterson knows how to write thrillers that keep one's eyes glued to the page - I freely admit I've become a Patterson addict since the beginning of this year, when I first started reading some of his stuff.