Across Africa

Detective Alex Cross returns for another investigation. This time he is on the trail of a psychopathic killer called The Tiger, in Africa

Detective Alex Cross returns for another investigation. This time he is on the trail of a psychopathic killer called The Tiger, in Africa

Cross Country
Author: James Patterson
Publisher: Random House
Price: Rs 420
Rating: JJJJ

This book will be read because

Everybody loves Patterson. In 2007 an estimated 16 million of his books were sold in the United States alone more (according to the James Patterson official web site) than the combined number of John Grisham and Stephen King books sold that year. More than 150 million of his books have apparently sold worldwide and he has had 19 consecutive No. 1 New York Times hardcover bestselling novels.

It's easy enough to see how this happened. The nearly-400 pages of this book slip rapidly and fluently through your fingers. Cross Country is laid out in a neatly-spaced non-threatening typeface, has short chapters, exhilarating peaks and troughs, and a backdrop of family warmth, a tragic past, commendable fidelity, foolish bravery and predictable doggedness, against which the plot gallops past.

And Alex Cross toou00a0... Cross is the lovable six-foot-three 200-pound African American detective who, when he finally gets to Africa in this book, is snarlingly referred to as "White man!"

Cross grew up an orphan u2014 his father was an alcoholic and his mom died from lung cancer when he was only 9.

The discipline and love in his upbringing is from his grandmother Nana, a favourite character in the books, and his tough outlook is from the neighbourhood in Washington DC where they lived. Cross studied psychology and worked as a psychologist in private practice. Even now, as a full-time famous detective, he continues sessions with a few patients. Of course this background is very useful in police work and his primary role is as a profiler.
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Cross's first wife was killed, and his second found it hard to keep up with his work and moved out. But he's a great dad to the 3 kids, and brings them up on his own but Nana is a lifesaver.

Now it seems there are tigers in Africa too. Cross has been a detective for more than a decade but this is the worst murder scene he has ever seen. A family has been butchered in their home. It so happens that the mother is someone he once knew and cared for. More senseless killings follow. But by now Cross has set off on the (elusive) trail of a vicious maniac known as The Tiger who operates out of darkest Africa, against the pleas, advice and threats of his family, colleagues and even strangers.

We learn that Tiger is a sort of title, adopted by diabolical warlords who trade diamonds for oil, gas, weapons and drugs. They conduct their trade through gangs of children and adolescents, training them in cruelty of every kind.

There's a terrible, terrible violence here that we're maybe going to have to get used to. Killing is not the mere taking of a life. It involves slashes, punctures, severing, amputations and repetitive trauma using a variety of cutting tools of different strength and function. It revels in the glee of being witness to the agony of members of a family as they watch each other's writhing torture and listen to each other's screams of suffering. How many times can you use the word "horrific" in one paragraph?

Most abhorrent of all is that violence of this nature has been perpetrated by young children.

"At the joint, Azi; Less bone," calls out a team leader in instruction as the child Azi raises a machete to hack off Cross's arm.

Plucked from lives of innocence and deprivation, they are groomed to work in teams with productive function ranging from the evil rapacious dismembering killing to that of the more genteel "Area Boys" who walk through traffic jams robbing drivers and passengers. "Like gangbangers, without the bling. Just cockroach thugs," says Cross's CIA contact.

It's important to know how the world works, especially when one is feeling particularly sorry for oneself. Cross makes it from Nigeria to Sierra Leone, a lawless and savage region (and as radically unlike that mythical Botswana as James Patterson is from Alexander McCall Smith).

He meets the one-armed Moses, who tells him his story, and Cross promises to tell the world. As a teenager, Moses had been a diamond miner himself, until the civil war. His wife sold palm oil in the market. They had two fine sons. Then the infamous soldiers of the Revolutionary United Front arrived. They told him that if he watched them kill the boys they would spare his wife. He did as they told. They killed her anyway.

Then they asked if he wanted short or long sleeves for after the war. They cut off his arm. Just as they were about to cut the other arm, an explosion came from the next house and Moses fell unconscious.
There was nowhere for Moses to go, this was his home.

Perhaps we don't need those diamonds after all?

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