James Patterson is a gifted storyteller and a talented marketer. He keeps all of his paragraphs brief. His chapters are always two or three, never more than four, pages long. He designed all of his early covers with big, bold titles along with his name in big, bold type (a design which has revolutionized the covers of thrillers). He has so many story ideas that he often collaborates with other authors to get these stories written, published, and to the public. Patterson’s name regularly graces an average of three to four new titles per year. And it all started with Alex Cross, Patterson’s brilliant criminal profiler and star of more than a dozen novels from “Along Came a Spider” to the latest, “Double Cross.” In “Double Cross,” Alex Cross is wooed by a new love, and by his old obsession of solving crimes, to leave his new private practice and returning to police work. Of course, he has little choice because one killer is murdering people in a very public way and daring Cross to catch him. Meanwhile, former friend-turned-enemy Kyle Craig, a.k.a. The Mastermind, has escaped from prison and has Alex Cross in his sights. If you like Patterson and his Alex Cross novels, this one won’t disappoint. Patterson has more than proven himself a master of suspense, mayhem, and action, but his true marketing genius is more carefully crafted in the character of his star, Alex Cross. Cross is a truly likable character. He loves his children and his grandmother who lives with them. He has had several love interests, whom he loves, but Cross loses them because he is so often caught in the crosshairs both literally and figuratively. He has killers after him, which keeps readers interested, but the genius of Patterson’s Cross, which helps readers identify with him, is that the character loves his work. It is this love for his job, or rather the demands of his job, that creates the real inner turmoil for Cross. He loves his family but his work keeps calling him away; he loves the work but he misses his family. In this work-busy, career-oriented world, many readers can identify with Cross’ conundrum of work-time encroaching on family-time. Alex Cross is a guy who resembles a lot of folks but with a life that often has him saving the day. Talk about marketing genius.