Fear No Evil by James Patterson

A Mystery/Thriller, 2021 by Little Brown, 400 Pages

What I Didn’t Like:

• Rushed ending. Not a cliffhanger, although Patterson is no stranger to those. This felt like you should still have another 100 pages coming and instead … poof, the ending appeared. It was weird. 
• Is it starting to feel like you should let these poor men retire? I can’t explore that one too much. But I definitely thought about it during this book at least once. 
• The Billie storyline. It wasn’t my favorite and it gave me even more procedural questions than usual.

What I Did Like:

• John Sampson. He’s been in every book but there were definitely a few previous ones in the series where I felt like he was not as big a part of the book and it made me sad. This book has more Sampson and he’s amazing. Could we be seeing the birth of Sampson stepping up into the main character role for these books? That’s my guess. 
• The chase. James Patterson excels at writing an amazing cat-and-mouse game between a bad guy and a good guy. In this case it was well written and intense. It takes you to places Alex Cross has never been before and keeps things interesting. 
• More of the mysterious M. This has been a strange concept for the Alex Cross books to explore and when it first popped up I wasn’t a fan. But this one felt like it was pulling toward an explanation that I actually might like. We shall see (because you know there will be another Alex Cross book next November). 

Who Should Read This One:

• Alex Cross fans, even if you skipped a few because you didn’t like the way it was shaping up. The added Sampson stuff made this feel more like “old school” Alex Cross and that’s not a bad thing. 

My Rating: 4 Stars.

Look, I’m an Alex Cross fan. My grandmother and I read them together for years. That taints my reviews because it’s hard for me to read one and not be biased. I love the action, I love the characters, and I love the intensity.