Independent Reading Project Q4 Benchmark Portfolio

Jhonas Dunakin                        Book Review: Cat & Mouse                                    1/19/11

Red

            Cat & Mouse by James Patterson is a mystery fiction in a book series of so far sixteen books. It is a number one bestseller and has bin reviewed in the Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Chicago Tribune, San Diego Union, Baltimore Sun, and Publishers Weekly. James Patterson is a New York Times best seller thirty five times. The book Along Came a Spider (1993) was made into a movie in 2001 staring Morgan Freeman as Detective Alex Cross. Along Came a Spider is the first book of the Alex Cross series.

            Cat & Mouse is about a DC Metro Police Detective who has a degree in psychology. He is African-American, has two kids Janie and Damon, and his partner is his best friend John Sampson Gary Sonji (a murderer Alex caught in a previous book) has escaped from a maximum-security prison and on top of that the FBI is pressuring Alex to work with Interpol and Scotland Yard on a case in Europe who dissects his victims alive. The killer is named Mr. Smith. Gary Sonji threatens to kill Alex and his family. Alex is determined to find Sonji and he sets up a trap in New York City Hospital. Sonji senses the trap and runs away to the swears. Alex finds him and shoots Sonji who is carrying a firebomb that goes off and kills him. Sonji promises that Alex and his family will be killed. A man comes to Alex’s house beats him, his kids, and his grandma Nana Mama. Alex is taken to the hospital and is declared to be in critical condition. The second in command of the FBI is a good friend of Alex and he brings in a specialist (Thomas Peirce) to find out who did the crime. Thomas is working the Mr. Smith case and is not happy to be working this case as well. Thomas is working the Mr. Smith case because Mr. Smith first struck when he killed his girl friend in Cambridge Massachusetts. He is told to work with John Sampson Alex’s partner. They are brought to Princeton were they connect the crime with Sonji’s brither. Thomas goes to Sonji’s brother’s house without Sampson and he beats him and Thomas psychologically tortures him because he knows he has a major case of OCD. He confesses to doing it all and Thomas thinks to himself ‘I’m So much better than Alex Cross.” Sampson and Thomas return to DC and Alex is still found in critical state according to the doctor’s report. The real Alex is brought to FBI in Quantico and he tells the agents there that he was never in critical state that he was faking it because he found out that Thomas was Mr. Smith. That the story he told the cops was false. He actually caught his girlfriend cheating on him and killed her. Her name was Isabella. Alex found the pattern in how Mr. Smith was killing. The names of everyone he killed followed the phrase “I Killed Isabella Calais.” S wasn’t killed yet and Alex found out it was Mr. Smith himself. Alex found him in his apartment in Cambridge and fought with him. Sampson stormed in and killed Thomas/ Mr. Smith.

The main characters are Alex Cross, John Sampson, Gary Sonji, and Thomas Peirce/ Mr. Smith. The main conflict is person vs. person. It was mostly Alex facing psycho killers. My favorite character is Thomas Peirce/ Mr. Smith because he tricked the whole FBI and worked on a case against himself. He also solved a case that no one could solve, the beatings of Alex Cross and he also killed in a specific pattern. The book has no important messages it was just for entertainment. But if there was a message it would be don’t kill in pattern or the authorities will find out.

            I could relate to John Sampson because he never gives up and he has a long time friend who he does everything with. I have two of those friends. He also seems mentally strong and has a positive attitude most of the time. I have never done any of the things that any of theses characters have done. I’m not a world-class detective or a psychopathic killer. But there is a part when Sampson is surprised and crying when Alex and his family was beaten, I have felt sorry and sad for the death of a good friend. His mom died in a car accident coming home from Baltimore and she fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a construction site.

            I absolutely love this book, series, and author. I have read the first four books and I have bought the next four in the series and I’m currently on the fifth book Pop Goes the Weasel. One strength of the book is that it uses a lot of descriptive writing which helps you be in the book instead of just reading it. It also has a lot of interesting characters. The psychopathic killers that James Patterson creates are very creative. All the books in the series have something psychological in them and follow some sort of pattern that is really difficult to decipher. Also Alex Cross is an interesting character He was a psychologist who was living it big. Had a beautiful wife and kids. His wife was killed and he quit being a psychologist to join the DC Metro Police. He also lives with his grandma in a dangerous part of DC, South West. There is lots of crime and drug abuse in that part of the city. The story is also very unpredictable. For example the patterns are very hard to predict and it’s hard to guess what the bad guy is going to do next. If I could change something in the book I would change how Gary Sonji dies. It seems like a death that happens to bad guys in movies. It should be an unpredictable death.

            I would highly recommend this book. Especially to people who like unpredictable things and/or surprises, it has action, adventure, and mystery. The book is also part of a sixteen book series that has different killers and mysteries. Not only does it have that but it also has romance. It has everything you could possibly want in a book, it’s an easy read, and I can almost promise you that you will get hooked after a couple of chapters