Product Description

Alex Cross is on vacation when he gets the call. A city in Nevada has been annihilated and the Russian super-criminal known as the Wolf is claiming responsibility.

In a matter of hours, Cross is catapulted into an international chase of astonishing danger. Arriving in London to join forces with Scotland Yard and Interpol, Alex fights his way through a torrent of false leads, impersonators and foreign agents before he gets close to the heart of the crimes. Then, in the most unforgettable finale James Patterson has ever written, Alex Cross confronts the truth of the Wolf’s identity – a revelation that even Cross himself may be unable to survive.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37406 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
London Bridges is something of a departure for James Patterson's Alex Cross novels in that it contains a serious speculation about what would--some might say, what will--happen if international crime copies the methods of terrorists or forms an alliance with them. The Russian mafia boss known as the Wolf delivers an ultimatum--large cash payments will be made and various prisoners released, or he will set off nuclear explosions in London, New York, Paris and Tel Aviv.

To prove his seriousness, he has already destroyed several small townships and a couple of bridges; this book inhabits a world where people will murder thousands just to prove that they are serious. Cross's usual ability to get inside the mind of a killer is far more of a problem when the killer is a man who has successfully erased his past, who communicates through cut-outs and expendable hirelings. Patterson's terse chapters and breakneck pacing are effective here--with its extended displays of insider knowledge and casual attitude to torture, this is not a likeable book, but it is a suspenseful one.--Roz Kaveney

Synopsis
Alex Cross is on vacation when he gets the call. A city in Nevada has been annihilated and the Russian super-criminal known as the Wolf is claiming responsibility. In a matter of hours, Cross is catapulted into an international chase of astonishing danger. Arriving in London to join forces with Scotland Yard and Interpol, Alex fights his way through a torrent of false leads, impersonators and foreign agents before he gets close to the heart of the crimes. Then, in the most unforgettable finale James Patterson has ever written, Alex Cross confronts the truth of the Wolf's identity - a revelation that even Cross himself may be unable to survive.

About the Author
James Patterson has written numerous international number one bestsellers. He lives in Florida.

Customer Reviews

Don't waste your time or money
This would have to be one of the most badly written books I have ever wasted time on. Most of it just did not make sense - like trying to have a conversation with someone who is high. Really disjointed and poor character development. Why was this published? Bizarre.

Suspenseful and entertaining.
It has to be admitted that James Patterson is not overwhelmingly renowned for lengthy chapters that go into immense detail and consideration, forcing the reader to make difficult presumptions about plots and characters. Patterson's suspense thrillers have to be taken as just that - mass market novels that give a jump of surprise and a cliff-hanger of suspense, before relieving or shocking the reader until an exciting conclusion is given to a panting observer. 'London Bridges' does just that. It considers a world in which crazy antagonists do crazy things, in which the hero has, quite literally, to save the plot, and bring some sort of normality back to a novel of electric suspense. The literature and language is not amazing, and neither is the tendency to write chapters shorter than ten pages. But as an entertaining holiday read, what more could one want?

London Bridges
This was my first Patterson book so I can't compare it to his other books. After reading some of the reviews here my expectations were low, and while the book wasn't great it wasn't awful either. The plot seems to be taken from a James Bond movie and while it's not very fresh or inspired, the plot moves quickly and the pace only slows down in the parts dealing with Alex Cross's private lives. These sequences didn't add anything to the plot. Perhaps they are relevant to some larger story arc throughout the series, I don't know.

Overall, I found "London Bridges" to be an entertaining, if somewhat uninspired, thriller. A quick read.