Author: James Patterson
First published in 1994
Thickness: 466 pages
Personal rating: 3 stars
In short
Someone has killed one of the most powerful men in the U.S. Senate - and the whole world is watching. Someone has murdered a small black girl on the mean streets of Washington - and no one seems to care. But only D.C. homicide cop Alex Cross suspects that the evil striking down both the high and the lowly wears the same shocking face. (www.goodreads.com)
My two cents
Jack & Jill, two killers reap fear in the hearts of the rich and powerful. They claim to be cleansing the country of bad influences and announce their crimes through various channels, with the ultimate target: the President of the United States.
On the other side of the scales, you've got a child killer. A brutal child killer, whose actions speak beyond imagination. Two young children already beaten to dead and more to follow if he can't be stopped.
Those are the two cases Alex Cross, prime detective, psychologist and lead character in this novel, has to solve.
In both evil is showing its most awful face, and they both climb to an unbelievable climax.
Personally I found the novel hard to get into. It was a little slow to captivate me, but the last fifty pages had me on the edge of my seat. I'm not a detective novel fan per se, because a lot of it has been done a million times before and the end is pretty much the same, the crimes will be solved, good will rule over bad.
What strikes me different about Jack and Jill is the multitude of narrations. We don't only see in the head of Alex Cross, but also those around him and even the criminals get their say, so we get a little of both. Not only the search and ultimate answer the detective is searching for, but even a glimpse at the justification of the crimes, even if it is twisted in logic.
