Dear Reader,
I don't think it's a complete accident that Alex Cross is fiction's most popular detective of the past twenty years.
And I don't think you and I have become so attached to him over the years just because he's a smart, good-looking, hard-working, dragon-slaying crime-fighter. Because goodness knows there are plenty of fabulously talented, charming, handsome, butt-kicking law enforcers out there on our TV sets, in the theaters, and in our local bookstores.
I personally think at least part of his special appeal has to do with the fact that he—like many of us—has known and been dealing with a real, life-changing tragedy. I'm speaking of the murder of his wife and mother of his first two children, Maria, and how this event has haunted him since we first met him in Along Came a Spider.
Having myself lost somebody very close when I was a young man, I know Maria's death has always been very important to my notion of who Alex Cross is and what drives him.
But, at the same time, I knew that one day he was going to have to deal head-on with this tragedy.
November 13th—when the 12th Alex Cross novel, Cross, comes out—is to be the day.
I like to think that Cross is the biggest, most thrilling, most emotional, and most surprising Alex Cross novel I've written yet.
Not only does Alex have to confront his wife's killer—a lovely psychopath who's known even to his friends as "The Butcher"—but Alex has to confront his own memories of and emotions about Maria.
The book is not a prequel and takes place in the present, but there are some trips back into Alex's memory and, after a prologue that I'm not going to spoil for you here, you will have a chance to meet Maria for the first time . . . and get a glimpse of those wonderful days before the event that changed the life of Alex Cross—and that of his family—forever.
I hope you are as gripped reading it as I was writing it.
Copyright © 2006 by James Patterson.