Along came a Spider: James Patterson

Alex Cross is called to investigate a murder in a poor section of town, a black mother and her two children were murdered in their home. Both the mom and the daughter had their breasts removed. Soon after two children of famous parents are abducted from their school. The little boy is found a short while later, dead and physically abused. We see parts of the story from the little girl's eyes (Maggie Rose)as she is shipped to South America and working as a farmer with a large family. At the story unfolds we are introduced to Soneji and his alter ego Gary Murphy, who was a teacher at the children's school and responsible for the kidnapping. Cross goes to Sonjei's home and finds books and news articles about kidnappings and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Sonjei is obsessed with becoming a famous kidnapper. The police find the coffin he had buried the children in the barn, but it is empty. Assuming that Maggie is also dead the search seems to end once Sonjei is caught and locked up. He had gone back to town to kill a teacher he had worked with at the private school, killing her the same way the two women were killed. Once in prison Sonjei acts like he has a multiple personality disorder and is hoping for an insanity plea. The jury finds him guilty. He then escapes prison and shows up at Cross's house in an attempt to kidnap his children. The plot then thickens when sonjei ends up back in prison and swears he doesn't have the ransom money or know where Maggie is, that he was being followed. Cross's new girlfriend Jezze, who was head of the secret service and 2 other secret service agents finished the kidnapping by collecting the ransom money and abducting the girl sending her to South America. Throughout the story I feel for Nana-momma- who not only raised her own children, but her grandson and now her great grandchildren. Alex doesn't seem to appreciate what this woman does. I was also confused on why Jezze didn't just "find" the girl instead of being an accomplice. She may have gotten away with stealing the ransom money. My personal opinioin was that the book would have been better had the girlfriend not been forced on the reader, the love story took away from the face pace of the "who done it".