Roses Are Red (Alex Cross Series #6)

by James Patterson

Overview

Alex Cross races against time as a series of crimes stuns Washington, D. C.—and he might be facing his most brilliant enemy yet.
 
In a series of terrifying crimes, bank robbers have been laying out precise demands when they enter the building-and then killing the bank employees and their families if those instructions are not followed to the letter.
 
Detective Alex Cross takes on the case, certain that this is no ordinary bank robber at work; the pathological need for control and perfection is too great. Cross is in the midst of a personal crisis at home, but the case becomes all-consuming as he learns that the Mastermind is plotting one huge, last, perfect crime.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538741214
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	01/10/2023
Series:	Alex Cross Series
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	16,359
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

James Patterson has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977 James Patterson's books have sold more than 300 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.

Hometown:

Palm Beach, Florida

Date of Birth:

March 22, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newburgh, New York

Education:

B.A., Manhattan College, 1969; M.A., Vanderbilt University, 1971

Website:

http://www.jamespatterson.com

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1
BRIANNE PARKER didn’t look like a bank robber or a murderer – her pleasantly plump baby face fooled everyone. But she knew that she was ready to kill if she had to this morning. She would find out for sure at ten minutes past eight.

The twenty-four-year-old woman wore khakis, a powder blue University of Maryland windbreaker, and scuffed white Nike sneakers. None of the early-morning commuters noticed her as she walked from her dented white Acura to a thick stand of evergreen trees, where she hid.

She was outside the Citibank in Silver Spring, Maryland, just before eight. The branch was scheduled to open in ninety seconds. She knew from her talks with the Mastermind that it was a freestanding bank with two drive-through lanes. It was surrounded by what he called big-box stores: Target, PETsMART, Home Depot, Circuit City.

At eight o’clock on the dot, Brianne approached the bank from her hiding place in the evergreens under a colorful billboard obnoxiously offering McDonald’s breakfast to the public. From that angle she couldn’t be seen by the female teller who was just opening the glass front door and had momentarily stepped outside.

A few strides from the teller, she slipped on a rubbery President Clinton mask, one of the most popular masks in America and probably the one hardest to trace. She knew the bank teller’s name, and she spoke it clearly as she pulled out her gun and pressed it against the small of the woman’s back.

"Inside, Ms. Jeanne Galetta. Then turn around and lock the front door again. We’re going to see your boss, Mrs. Buccieri."

Her short speech at the entrance to the bank was scripted, word for word, even the pauses. The Mastermind said it was crucial that a bank robbery proceed in a specific order, almost by rote.

"I don’t want to kill you, Jeanne. But I will if you don’t do everything I say, when I say it. It’s your turn to talk now, darling. Do you understand what I’ve just told you so far?"

Jeanne Galetta nodded her head of short brown hair so vigorously that her wire-rimmed glasses nearly fell off. "Yes, I do. Please don’t hurt me," she gasped. She was in her late twenties, attractive in a suburban sort of way, but her blue polyester pantsuit and sensible stack-heeled shoes made her look older.

"The manager’s office. Now, Ms. Jeanne. If I’m not out of here in eight minutes, you will die. I’m serious. If I’m not out of here in eight minutes, you and Mrs. Buccieri die. Don’t think I won’t do it because I’m a woman. I will shoot you both like dogs."

Copyright © 2000 by James Patterson

What People are Saying About This

Larry King

James Patterson does it again. His latest, Roses are Red is on top of his game. It's another terrific thriller based around his Washington, D.C., detectives. This one has twists and turns and an ending that will floor you. Patterson never, and I mean never disappoints...

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
James Patterson, bestselling author of Pop Goes the Weasel, Cradle and All, and Kiss the Girls, returns with Roses Are Red, his latest gripping dark crime tale featuring brilliant profiler Alex Cross. As fans have come to expect from Patterson's work, this novel is fueled with high emotion and resonates with moral outrage. As always, Patterson gives his book a healthy measure of both poignant humanity and horrendous cruelty, once more demonstrating that he is at the top of his game, mining an area of psychological suspense that is all his own.

Cross's latest case is one of his most frustrating. It concerns an ingenious criminal called the Mastermind, who forms vicious teams to rob banks and yet changes the pattern of the crime each time. If his plans are not followed precisely, he threatens to kill whole families taken as hostage -- and does so without hesitation. In another instance all the members of a bank staff are murdered without reason, simply because the Mastermind wants the police to find a scene of carnage. And in an effort to sever all ties to himself, the Mastermind slays his own lackeys as well.

But the Mastermind isn't all that Cross has to worry about. His girlfriend, Christine, held captive for a year by the insane but brilliant Weasel, cannot overcome her fears and paranoia that she or her newborn child, Alex Jr., will once again fall prey to some madman. Cross's daughter, Jannie, suddenly becomes victim to grand mal seizures, and soon doctors discover that she has a brain tumor. The one shining light amid all his troubles is Cross's fledgling relationship with his new partner on this case, Agent Betsey Cavalierre, who offers him friendship and a stabilizing force for his disintegrating personal life.

The Mastermind grows more and more bold, raping a young woman because he wants a child and becoming ever more dangerous and erratic. And when Cross and his team become too great an annoyance, the Mastermind decides to make his next gambit a much more personal one and exacts a horrifying vengeance.

The novel is written in chapters that sporadically alternate between Cross's viewpoint and that of the Mastermind, giving a greater depth to both the hero and the maniacal antagonist. The major subplots focus on Cross's greatest personal fears: the illness of his child and the loss of his beloved. Cross's personal and professional lives are becoming even more difficult for him to separate, as the trials he faces at work come home to haunt him. The fact that Cross tries desperately to function on two planes -- facing madmen during the day and hoping to relax with his family at night -- tightens the novel to the breaking point as the story progresses through a series of brutal crimes that stalk closer to his loved ones.

Patterson uses incredibly short chapters that speed the narrative along and compress the story line. The plot elements become all the more complex and gripping as we're drawn further into the realm of a lunatic's thoughts. Once again, Patterson proves that he's capable of turning in an engaging, cunningly crafted tale that transcends the serial killer subgenre. He has another guaranteed bestseller on his hands with Roses Are Red, an intense, action-packed, and thought-provoking novel that will leave the reader awestruck and gasping for breath.

--Tom Piccirilli

bn.com

The book has plenty of action plus more on the personal side of Cross and an <%END%>ing...definitely requiring a sequel...

Sunday Oklahoman

...twists and turns...Patterson is effective at keeping the pace and action going at a lightning clip...

Daily News

This was my first James Patterson book, though his name was familiar, as were the titles of several of his novels. I am never completely comfortable jumping into the middle of a series, but I knew it was time I gave Patterson a look. His newest turns out to be a dandy place to start. The police in Washington, D.C., are working with the FBI to solve a flurry of extraordinarily brutal bank robberies, and an old FBI friend brings in cop-psychologist Alex Cross. The timing couldn't be worse for Cross and his friends and family, whom he seems to have a knack for placing in harm's way. Patterson tells his story without embellishment—there is nothing elevated in his language or his structure—but after a while this book becomes unbearable to put down. The exceedingly short chapters are chock full of action;very few scenes lack a suspenseful closer or cliffhanger, and so you impulsively turn one more page. Even the ending left me aching in suspense. Big fun, easy on the eyes, Roses Are Red has me looking for Patterson's earlier works. And the next one.
—Randy Michael Signor

Alex Cross is back--and that alone will have this novel crowning bestseller lists, a feat Patterson's books have achieved often of late, both his Cross (Pop Goes the Weasel) and non-Cross (Cradle and All) thrillers. Patterson won an Edgar for his first novel, The Thomas Berryman Number, but he hasn't won one since. One reason is that his prose, though sturdy as a trusted rowboat, is just as wooden; another is that his plotting--here detailing Washington, D.C., homicide detective Cross's pursuit of a crazed but crafty homicidal criminal known as the Mastermind--is about as sophisticated as that of a Frank and Joe Hardy tale. So why are the Cross novels so popular? In part because Patterson constructs them out of short, simple sentences, paragraphs and chapters that practically define the brisk, fun, E-Z read, and in part because, here and elsewhere, he engages in the smart and unusual tactic of alternating third- and first-person (from Cross's POV) narrative. Mostly, though, readers adore them because Cross is such a lovable hero, a family-oriented African-American whose compassion warmly balances the icy cruelty of Patterson's villains and their sometimes graphically depicted crimes (as is the case here). In the new novel, Cross suffers lady problems as his old love, who's in terror of Cross's job, leaves him, and he fumbles toward a new romance with an FBI agent; he also suffers personal trauma as his beloved daughter develops a brain tumor. That's back-burner action, though. The main focus here is, first, on a series of shocking Mastermind-engineered bank robbery/kidnappings involving wanton killings and, second, on the hunt to ID the Mastermind--a hunt both absorbing and annoying for its several (rather smelly) red herrings, and concluding with a revelation that screams sequel. While there's nothing subtle in this novel, every blatant element is packaged for maximum effect: roses may be red, but Patterson's newest is green all the way. U.K. and translation rights, Arthur Pine Associates. 1.25 million first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Direct main selections; simultaneous Random House large-print edition and Time Warner Audio. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The latest "nursery rhyme" adventures of Dr. Alex Cross pick up where Pop Goes the Weasel (LJ 7/99) left off. Girlfriend Christine has just had baby Alex Jr. but is still haunted by her kidnapping and can't face life with a policeman. Alex is off catching yet another maniacal murderer, a creep who calls himself Mastermind and is terrorizing suburban Washington, DC, by robbing banks and killing indiscriminately. Working with the FBI rather than dependable partner John Sampson, Alex is frustrated again and again as the killer eludes them, until finally a break in the case leads them to their quarry--or does it? Patterson's formulaic suspense machine is once again in high gear, and fans of his usual breakneck plotting won't mind that the story is implausible and the surprise ending so surprising that any hint of motivation is sacrificed. They'll be waiting for the next installment. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/00.]--Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Who's robbing all those banks and kidnapping all those people and killing all those accomplices? It's somebody calling himself the Mastermind—a comicbook sobriquet that represents everything that's wrong with the latest installment in Patterson's Alex Cross franchise.

Kirkus Reviews

Keith David reprises his role as Alex Cross in this reading of the latest thriller featuring the Washington, D.C., detective. Jason Culp provides the narrative glue in this audiobook, reading from the third-person point of view. The first-person point of view of Cross is read by David. Though not the most satisfying of Patterson’s novels, Roses Are Red offers plenty of surprises, action, and emotional upheavals to delight and terrify as Cross pursues a brilliant criminal known only as Mastermind, whose threats include a series of bank robberies and an outrageous kidnapping scheme. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

APR/MAY 01 - AudioFile