That’s not to say it’s a bad novel, of course. It isn’t. It just seems...blah. Alex Cross and his frequent partner, FBI Agent Kyle Craig, are investigating a bizarre string of murders that appear to have been committed by vampires (not real ones, but people who like to dress up funny, stick custom-made fangs in their mouths, and drink blood). Meanwhile the Mastermind, the evil genius who was the centerpiece of Roses Are Red, keeps taunting Cross, calling him up and spouting you’ll-never-catch-me dialogue, and eventually Cross wraps up the vampire case just in time for a showdown with his maniacal nemesis.

Roses Are Red was downright brilliant, a clever and complex mystery that kept us all on the edge of our seats, until the final chapter, when Patterson made us all fall off our seats. Violets Are Blue, on the other hand, is less intricate, less compelling, less satisfying, with probably the weakest, thinnest storyline of the Cross novels. Usually the novels have an eerie feel to them, a shadowy, look-behind-you claustrophobia that makes you feel all creepy inside. This one, however, just feels weird. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie 8mm, with Nicholas Cage as a guy who goes deep into the underground world of snuff films and pornography. I can’t say I liked the movie, but I sure do remember how it felt: dark, gloomy, immensely sad and unsettling. Violets Are Blue, with its goth characters, vampirism, and serial killings, should feel something like 8mm. It doesn’t. It feels slick, superficial - Patterson shows us this perverse subculture, but he never immerses us in it. We remain firmly planted outside it, which means we remain firmly planted outside the novel. An Alex Cross novel is usually, if you don’t mind a mixed-up word, unputdownable. If I hadn’t been curious to see whether Cross would find out, this time around, the identity of The Mastermind, I might have put this one down.

--David Pitt