(Publisher’s Weekly, Oct. 27)

Bestseller Patterson‘s 14th Alex Cross thriller doesn’t follow up on the plot threads left dangling in the 2007’s Double Cross concerning still-on-the-loose serial killer Kyle Crag.  Instead, Cross, a Washington, D.C., police detective, takes on a different quarry-a human monster known as the Tiger with ties to the African underworld.  When the tiger and his teenage thugs butcher writer Ellie Cox, her husband and children in their Georgetown home, Cross is devastated because Ellie had been his girlfirend in college.  The Cox family massacre proves to be just the first in a series.  Cross pursues the Tiger to Nigeria, where the profiler finds himself at the mercy of corrupt government officials who may be working with the Tiger.  Spending less time than usual exploring his villain’s psychological back-story, Patterson delivers an atypical tale of James Bond-style revenge.  Craig’s brief cameo toward the end suggests the series will resume its usual path in the next book (Cross Country is due out November 2008)