My rating 4 stars
Blurb
Detective Alex Cross is back-and he's in love. But his happiness is threatened by a series of chilling murders in Washington, D.C., murders with a pattern so twisted they leave investigators reeling. Cross's pursuit of the killer produces a suspect, a British diplomat named Geoffrey Shafer. But proving he's the murderer becomes a potentially deadly task. As Shafer engages in a brilliant series of surprising countermoves, Alex and his fiance become hopelessly entangled with the most memorable nemesis Cross has ever faced.
My opinion
The novel is tense and fast paced, chilling, with a villain most diabolical. Evoked joy and sadness, and disgust, loathing in the four horsemen and their wicked game
The story is about a detective who is looking for a serial killer who (usually) uses women as his victims. but it is all a game to him and uses dice to pick how he kills his victims. but soon he decides to go solo and play a even more challenging game, kidnapping the detectives wife....
The ending is a surprise and it really makes you look forward to the next book as we begin to really care about Alex's personal life and not just read these books for the thriller aspect.
Knowledge truly is power, it’s everything; if you don’t have any, pretend you do.
We come into life so easily — from somewhere, from the universe, from God. Why should it be any harder when we leave life? We come from a good place. We leave — and go to a good place.
the more good things you have in your life, the easier it is to experience fear.
He was wound so tight that if you stuck coal up his ass, in a couple of weeks you’d have a diamond.
The players were the Rider on the White Horse, Conqueror; the Rider on the Red Horse, War; the Rider on the Black Horse, Famine; and himself, the Rider on the Pale Horse, Death.
“If you have only two pennies, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other "
“The American justice system is far from perfect, but it is still the very best justice system in the world.”
an ancient whirring ceiling fan that looked as if it might suddenly spin out of the ceiling. It seemed a nice metaphor for modern life in America, an aging infrastructure threatening to spin out of control.
cyclohymia, which can manifest itself in numerous hypomanic episodes as well as depressive symptoms. Its associated symptoms could include inflated self-esteem, a decreased need for sleep, excessive involvement in “pleasurable” activities, and an increase in goal-directed activity — in Shafer’s case, maybe, an intensified effort to win his game.
Alea jacta est, he remembered from his schoolboy Latin classes—Julius Caesar before he crossed the Rubicon: “The die is cast.”
