Geoffrey Shafer is an intelligence officer at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. Even though he appears to be a solid, devoted family man, Shafer is living dangerously on the edge consuming copious amounts of mood-altering drugs and carrying on an affair with his psychotherapist. For years he has been involved in a risk playing game called the Four Horseman with three other foreign service officers around the globe. While the others are only imagining their scenarios, Shafer is acting his out. He is Death.

Driving a gypsy cab, Shafer picks up women and brutally murders them. He then strips the bodies of all identification and dumps them in alleys in crime-ridden areas of the city. Because most of the victims are African-American and many are prostitutes, the police have not focused attention on the murders.

Alex Cross, however, begins to suspect that a serial killer, who is dubbed the Weasel, is responsible for these Jane Doe murders. The case becomes even more urgent when an E.R. nurse well known to Cross and his best friend and fellow cop Sampson becomes a victim. The chief of detectives refuses to believe a serial killer is at work. He insists that Cross and his colleagues abandon any effort to solve those murders and focus on the case of a white suburbanite last known to be taking a cab from National Airport.

Meanwhile, in his personal life, Cross and educator Christine Johnson have become engaged. While on a family trip to Bermuda, Christine disappears without a trace. With an occasional phone call taunting him about her disappearance and more victims’ bodies turning up, Cross is becoming frantic to solve the crimes.

With an emphasis on rapid-fire action, little time is devoted to character development. The villains playing opposite Alex Cross are not your common everyday garden-variety criminals. They are evil through and through with a proclivity for sociopathic sexual perversions. (Unlike some earlier Cross mysteries, most of the violence in Pop Goes the Weasel is off-stage even though the crimes are characteristically gruesome.) Geoffrey Shafer is no exception; although there are allusions to an emotionally abusive childhood, basically he’s just bad to the bone.

Cross, of course, is his complete opposite. He’s loving, compassionate, a model father, a loyal friend, and dedicated to justice and equality. Secondary characters are little more than roughly sketched in. That’s pretty much the extent of the character development -- the good guys are really good, the bad guys are really bad.

Patterson attracts readers with his fast-moving stories. From the opening scene, the narrative grabs the reader and rolls on. Utilizing very short chapters, the author doesn’t focus long on any individual character or any single incident. The action moves swiftly from one scene to another, and even the change-of-pace family interludes are brief. Since the reader knows the identity of the killer from the beginning, the suspense depends not on figuring out whodunit but on how he’s going to be caught.

Pop Goes the Weasel is sure to please Patterson’s many fans.

--Lesley Dunlap