Detective Alex Cross must confront his most terrifying nemesis ever -- and his own deepest fears -- in this electrifying thriller from the world's #1 bestselling writer.
D.C. Detective Alex Cross has seen a lot of crime scenes. But even he is appalled by the gruesome murders of two joggers in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park-killings that look more like the work of savage beasts than humans. Local police are horrified and even the FBI is baffled.
Then, as Cross is called in to take on the case, the carnage takes off, leaving a trail of bodies across America and sweeping him to Savannah, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Los Angeles as his nemesis, the merciless criminal known as the Mastermind, stalks him, taunts him, and once again, threatens everything he holds dear...

Review

James Patterson does everything but stick our finger in a light socket to give us a buzz." -- The New York Times

"James Patterson is to suspense what Danielle Steel is to romance." -- The New York Daily News

"Patterson, among the best novelists of crime stories ever, has reached his pinnacle." -- USA Today

"Patterson joins the elite company of Thomas Harris and John Sanford in concocting riveting and truly unique serial killers, while creating sleuths who are heroic and fascinating." -- San Francisco Examiner

Amazon.com Review

Fans of James Patterson's resourceful cop Alex Cross will be relieved to find that he's back on familiar territory with Violets Are Blue --and, more importantly, that this is one of the best Alex Cross thrillers yet.

The malign criminal genius of Roses Are Red is 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 alternate kindle_edition edition.

Review

'James Patterson does everything but stick our finger in a light socket' New York Times; 'Ticks like a time-bomb - full of threat and terror' Los Angeles Times; 'Patterson dedicates his latest to 'the millions of Alex Cross readers who frequently ask, 'Can't you write faster?" Those readers won't be disappointed.' Publishers Weekly --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

WITHOUT ANY WARNING

CHAPTER 1

NOTHING EVER STARTS where we think it does. So of course this doesn't begin with the vicious and cowardly murder of an FBI agent and good friend named Betsey Cavalierre. I only thought that it did. My mistake, and a really big and painful one.

I arrived at Betsey's house in Woodbridge, Virginia, in the middle of the night. I'd never been there before, but I didn't have any trouble finding it. The FBI and EMS were already there. There were flashing red and yellow lights everywhere, seeming to paint the lawn and front porch with bright, dangerous streaks.

I took a deep breath and walked inside. My sense of balance was off. I was reeling. I acknowledged a tall blond FBI agent I knew named Sandy Hammonds. I could see that Sandy had been crying. She was a friend of Betsey's.

On a hallway table I saw Betsey's service revolver. Beside it was a printed reminder for her next shooting qualifier at the FBI range. The irony stung.

I forced myself to walk down a long hallway that led from the living room to the back of the house. The house looked to be close to a hundred years old and was filled with the kind of country clutter that she'd loved. The master bedroom was situated at the end of the hall.

I knew instantly that the murder had happened in there. The FBI techs and the local police were swarming around the open door like angry wasps near a threatened hive. The house was strangely, eerily quiet. This was as bad as it gets, worse than anything else. Ever.

Another one of my partners was dead.

The second one brutally murdered in two years. And Betsey had been much more than just a partner. How could this have happened? What did it mean? I saw Betsey's small body sprawled on the hardwood floor and I went cold. My hand flew to my face, a reflex I had no control over.

The killer had stripped off her nightclothes. I didn't see them anywhere in the bedroom. The lower body was coated with blood. He'd used a knife. He'd punished Betsey with it. I desperately wanted to cover her, but I knew I couldn't.

Betsey's brown eyes were staring up at me, but they saw nothing. I remembered kissing those eyes and that sweet face. I remembered Betsey's laugh, high-pitched and musical. I stood there for a long time, mourning Betsey, missing her terribly. I wanted to turn away, but I didn't. I just couldn't leave her like this.

As I stood there in the bedroom, trying to figure out something coherent about Betsey's murder, the cell phone in my jacket pocket went off. I jumped. I grabbed it, but then I hesitated. I didn't want to answer.

"Alex Cross," I finally spoke into the receiver.

I heard a machine-filtered voice and it cut right through me. I shuddered against my will.

"I know who this is and I even know where you are. At poor, dear, butchered Betsey's. Do you feel a little bit like a puppet on a string, Detective? You should," said the Mastermind. "Because that's what you are. You're my favorite puppet, in fact."

"Why did you kill her?" I asked the monster. "You didn't have to do this."

He laughed a mechanical laugh and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. "You ought to be able to figure that out, no? You're the famous Detective Alex Cross. You have all those big, important cases notched on your belt. You caught Gary Soneji, Casanova. You solved Jack and Jill. Christ, you're impressive."

I spoke in a low voice. "Why don't you come after me right now? How about tonight? As you say, you know where I am."

The Mastermind laughed again, quietly, almost under his breath. "How about I kill your grandmother and your three kids tonight? I know where they are too. You left your partner with them, didn't you? You think he can stop me? John Sampson doesn't have a chance against me."

I hung up and ran out of the house in Woodbridge. I called Sampson in Washington and he picked up on the second ring.

"Everything okay there?" I gasped. "Everything's fine, Alex. No problems here. You don't sound too good, though. What's up? What happened?"

"He said he's coming for you and Nana and the kids," I told John. "The Mastermind."

"Not going to happen, sugar. Nobody will get past me. I hope to hell he tries."

"Be careful, John. I'm on my way back to Washington right now. Please be careful. He's crazy. He didn't just kill Betsey, he defiled her."

I ended the call with Sampson and I sprinted full-out toward my old Porsche.

The cell phone rang again before I got to the car.

"Cross," I answered, still running as I spoke, trying to steady the phone against my chin and ear.

It was him again. He was laughing maniacally. "You can relax, Dr. Cross. I can hear your labored breathing. I'm not going to hurt them tonight. I was just fucking with you. Having some fun at your expense.

"You're running, aren't you? Keep running, Dr. Cross. But you won't be fast enough. You can't get away from me. It's you I want. You're next, Dr. Cross."

Copyright (c) 2001 by James Patterson

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

James Patterson is the author of eight major national bestsellers in a row. A past winner of the prestigious Edgar Award, Patterson lives in Florida. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Library Journal

When two murders in San Francisco recall a case in Washington, DC, that Alex Cross has yet to solve, the wily detective is up and running and he runs straight into a bizarre group of role players who think that they really are vampires.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Washington, D.C., police detective Alex Cross returns for another visit (after Roses Are Red) to the top of the lists and for two new cases of disparate quality. The first, which dominates the narrative, takes place within America's vampire underground and is as exciting as anything Patterson has written; the second, in which Cross at last defeats the nemesis known as "the Mastermind," feels tacked on only to knot loose ends. In San Francisco, two joggers are slain, seemingly by both tiger and human teeth, and their blood drained; then an upscale couple is killed similarly in Marin County deaths suggestive of an earlier Cross case, prompting the detective's old pal Kyle Craig of the FBI to ask for his help. Craig's plea plunges Cross not only into a fetishistic netherworld in which thousands play at being vampires and a handful actually do kill for blood, but into personal turbulence as he alienates his family by his dedication to work, and as his always troubled love life takes further dips and flights, the latter in the company of SFPD Insp. Jamilla Hughes, who joins him on the cases. We know the good guys' immediate quarry, but they don't: two golden young men, brothers and self-styled vampires, with a pet tiger at their side. But who is the Sire, their ultimate leader? Meanwhile, the Mastermind, a brilliant homicidal maniac, plagues Cross with threatening phone calls. Most readers probably won't finger the Sire, but anyone who can't name the Mastermind long before Patterson reveals his identity must be reading this book backwards. The action reels around the country, from D.C. to California to Las Vegas to North Carolina, and readers will be swept away by it and by Patterson's expert mixing of Cross's professional and personal challenges. The narrative split between the two cases, vampiric and Mastermind, jars but not enough to seriously mar fans' pleasure, and the two cases will probably mesh more elegantly in the inevitable movie to come. (Nov. 19)Forecast: Is there a writer hotter than Patterson? A 10-city author tour, the forthcoming TV miniseries of his First to Die, and the simultaneous AudioBooks (unabridged and abridged, tape and CD) of Violets Are Blue will only increase the heat.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

Patterson's fans have been waiting a year for this one, since the heart-stopping conclusion of the last Alex Cross outing, Roses Are Red (2000), which revealed the identity of Cross' new foe, the Mastermind. The Mastermind is still plaguing him, but he becomes distracted when FBI liaison Kyle Craig calls him in on another case. A new set of killers is on the rampage, viciously attacking their victims and drinking their blood. These vampirelike killings lead Cross to San Francisco, where he partners with detective Jamilla Hughes. Cross interviews people associated with the vampire cults, some of whom actually believe they are vampires. The killers lead Cross and Hughes on a cross-country chase, striking seemingly at random. Cross believes that he may have found a pattern to the murders when he discovers that the killings are taking place in cities at the same time two magicians, David and Charles, are performing. In the meantime, the Mastermind is closing in on Cross, leading to the showdown fans have been waiting for. Patterson has set up a difficult task for himself: to create a confrontation that will be as gratifying as fans expect after the revelation of the Mastermind's identity at the end of Roses Are Red. Though the novel doesn't pack as much punch as it should, since the vampire murders, not the Mastermind, take up the majority of the book, Patterson still manages to come up with a satisfying ending, leaving readers to wonder what is next for Cross. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From AudioFile

When several victims are found covered with bite marks, their bodies completely drained of blood, D. C. detective Alex Cross's investigation takes him from home to California, and from Vegas to the Carolinas. Patterson is first-rate as he explores the shadowy world of American vampires, fetishists, cults, tattoo parlors, and the prosthetic fang business. As if dealing with ghouls isn't enough, Cross is still tormented by the Mastermind. Daniel Whitner performs Cross, and Kevin O'Rourke plays all the villains. Both are accomplished readers. Whitner has Cross--caring father, serious cop, hopeless romantic--down pat, while O'Rourke does a chilling job of creating the Mastermind and the two beautiful psychopaths who play with tigers. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.