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Along Came a Spider
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Alex Cross is a homicide detective with a Ph.D. in psychology. He works and lives in Southeast D.C. and looks like Muhammad Ali in his prime. He’s a tough guy from a tough part of town who wears Harris Tweed jackets and likes to relax by banging out Gershwin tunes on his baby grand piano. But he also has two adorable kids of his own, and they are his own special vulnerabilities.
Jezzie Flanagan is the first woman ever to hold the highly sensitive job as supervisor of the Secret Service in Washington. Blond, mysterious, seductive, she’s got an outer shell that’s as tough as it is beautiful. She rides her black BMW motorcycle at speeds of no less than 100 mph. What is she running from? What is her secret?
Alex Cross and Jezzie Flanagan are about to have a forbidden love affair-at the worst possible time for both of them. Because Gary Soneji, who wants to commit the “crime of the century,” is playing at the top of his game. Soneji has outsmarted the FBI, the Secret Service, and the police. Who will be his next victim?
Gary Soneji is every parent’s worst nightmare. He has become Alex Cross’s nightmare. And now, reader, he’s about to become yours.
Series:
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"Patterson's storytelling talent is in top form in this grisly escapist yarn."
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"Brilliantly terrifying! So exciting that I had to stay up all night to finish it! Packed with white-knuckle twists."
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"An incredibly suspenseful read with a one-of-a-kind villain who is as terrifying as he is intriguing. One of the best thrillers of the year."
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"Terror and suspense that grab the reader and won't let go. Just try running away from this one."
- On Sale
- Aug 1, 2003
- Page Count
- 464 pages
- Publisher
- Grand Central Publishing
- ISBN-13
- 9780446692632
What's Inside
CHAPTER 1
EARLY ON THE MORNING OF December 21, 1992, I was the picture of contentment on the sun porch of our house on 5th Street in Washington, D.C. The small, narrow room was cluttered with mildewing winter coats, work boots, and wounded children’s toys. I couldn’t have cared less. This was home.
I was playing Gershwin on our slightly out-of-tune, formerly grand piano. It was just past 5 A.M., and cold as a meat locker on the porch. I was prepared to sacrifice a little for “An American in Paris.”
The phone jangled in the kitchen. Maybe I’d won the D.C., or Virginia, or Maryland lottery and they’d forgotten to call the night before. I play all three games of misfortune regularly.
“Nana? Can you get that?” I called from the porch. “It’s for you. You might as well get it yourself,” my testy grandmother called back. “No sense me gettin’ up, too. No sense means nonsense in my dictionary.”
That’s not exactly what was said, but it went some thing like that. It always does.
I hobbled into the kitchen, sidestepping more toys on morning-stiff legs. I was thirty-eight at the time. As the saying goes, if I’d known I was going to live that long, I would have taken better care of myself.
The call turned out to be from my partner in crime, John Sampson. Sampson knew I’d be up. Sampson knows me better than my own kids.
“Mornin’, brown sugar. You up, aren’t you?” he said. No other I.D. was necessary. Sampson and I have been best friends since we were nine years old and took up shoplifting at Park’s Corner Variety store near the projects. At the time, we had no idea that old Park would have shot us dead over a pilfered pack of Chesterfields. Nana Mama would have done even worse to us if she’d known about our crime spree.
“If I wasn’t up, I am now,” I said into the phone receiver. “Tell me something good.”
“There’s been another murder. Looks like our boy again,” Sampson said. “They’re waitin’ on us. Half the free world’s there already.”
“It’s too early in the morning to see the meat wagon,” I muttered. I could feel my stomach rolling. This wasn’t the way I wanted the day to start. “Shit. Fuck me.”
Nana Mama looked up from her steaming tea and runny eggs. She shot me one of her sanctimonious, lady-of-the-house looks. She was already dressed for school, where she still does volunteer work at seventy-nine. Sampson continued to give me gory details about the day’s first homicides.
“Watch your language, Alex,” Nana said. “Please watch your language so long as you’re planning to live in this house.”
“I’ll be there in about ten minutes,” I told Sampson. “I own this house,” I said to Nana.
She groaned as if she were hearing that terrible news for the first time.
“There’s been another bad murder over in Langley Terrace. It looks like a thrill killer. I’m afraid that it is,” I told her.
“That’s too bad,” Nana Mama said to me. Her soft brown eyes grabbed mine and held. Her white hair looked like one of the doilies she puts on all our living room chairs. “That’s such a bad part of what the politicians have let become a deplorable city. Sometimes I think we ought to move out of Washington, Alex.”
“Sometimes I think the same thing,” I said, “but we’ll probably tough it out.”
“Yes, black people always do. We persevere. We always suffer in silence.”
“Not always in silence,” I said to her.
I had already decided to wear my old Harris Tweed jacket. It was a murder day, and that meant I’d be seeing white people. Over the sport coat, I put on my Georgetown warmup jacket. It goes better with the neighborhood.
On the bureau, by the bed, was a picture of Maria Cross. Three years before, my wife had been murdered in a drive-by shooting. That murder, like the majority of murders in Southeast, had never been solved.
I kissed my grandmother on the way out the kitchen door. We’ve done that since I was eight years old. We also say goodbye, just in case we never see each other again. It’s been like that for almost thirty years, ever since Nana Mama first took me in and decided she could make something of me.
She made a homicide detective, with a doctorate in psychology, who works and lives in the ghettos of Washington, D.C.