The House of Cross by James Patterson

Published by ‎ Little, Brown and Company on November 25, 2024

I’m not a huge fan of Alex Cross, in part because I can’t take FBI profilers seriously. Fortunately, Cross (who left the FBI but still works for the agency as a contractor) does no profiling in The House of Cross. The novel is essentially an action thriller with little crime detection but lots of gunfire.

Series fans might be pleased to note that recurring supervillain M, who leads a vigilante organization called Maestro, returns in The House of Cross. His identity and origin occupy a good chunk of the story. The mystery begins when Ryan Malcolm’s car crashes on a mountain road as he’s being pursued by killers. Malcolm founded a data-mining company that contracts with American intelligence agencies. Poor cell service prevents him from calling Cross during the car chase, but he leaves a Tor message to explain the “things I want to tell you so that you may bring to justice those responsible for my death.” He should have skipped the preamble and spit out the facts because the message ends when his vehicle goes off a cliff.

Who is M? The story delves into his background. All I’ll say is that thriller writers too often rely on evil twin brothers to explain criminal behavior. The mildly refreshing twist here is that both brothers are evil, even if one is worse than the other.

The main plot, in keeping with the modern thriller custom, is outlandish. A newly elected but not yet inaugurated president is making a list of potential Supreme Court appointments so she will be prepared if a position becomes vacant. Before the inauguration can occur, one of the candidates near the top of the list is shot between the eyes, another is stabbed in the kidneys, and a third (because the assassin apparently ran out of ideas despite testing a new superweapon) is shot to death. The killings are orchestrated by Maestro with the intention of changing the balance on the Supreme Court. That plan will require multiple vacancies on the Court, so the final chapters follow Cross, his buddy John Samson, and his wife Bree Stone as they try to thwart assassinations.

Now, the idea that an appointment to the Supreme Court can be influenced by killing all the potential nominees who don’t satisfy M, in anticipation that the president will appoint the three he doesn’t kill, is just nonsensical. The list of potential justices is always fluid. Hell, George Bush wanted to nominate his personal lawyer before senators quietly told him she wasn’t remotely qualified for the job. When candidates are scrubbed from the list, more candidates are added. Will Maestro just keep killing them until he approves of all the survivors? And since all the potential nominees are likely to share roughly the same ideology, it's unclear why Maestro views some as better than others (apart from some silliness about one candidate being insufficiently supportive of Indian treaties, as if treaty law issues are a burning issue in the Supreme Court).

The assassin keeps the aforementioned weapon (something about sonic waves) in reserve until the novel’s end, but by that point everyone (including the new president) understands what’s happening, so you’d think the Supreme Court Police, the US Marshals, and the FBI would manage to protect Supreme Court justices until the assassin is caught. Of course they don’t. Naturally, it all comes down to Cross in the end, because that’s how thrillers work.

So the plot makes no sense, but how often do plots in modern thrillers make sense? For the sake of enjoying the story, it’s best to ignore the plot’s foundation and view the book as an action novel. From that perspective, James Patterson succeeds in delivering some exciting chase scenes and gunfights. The snowmobile chases made me feel cold (not necessarily a plus since I hate being cold, but my point is that Patterson creates a vivid albeit chilly atmosphere). Naturally, being a supervillain, M finds a need to gloat before giving Cross and company a chance to escape. That’s a standard Bond movie formula and is routinely mocked, but readers don’t want the supervillain to win, so the formula is one way to assure the heroes’ victory. If there is a better way, Patterson didn’t find it. Still, readers expect a thriller to deliver thrills and this one does, ridiculous plot notwithstanding.

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