text: I've been following the Alex Cross series from its beginning, and after reading Cat & Mouse, I'm wondering if Patterson has taken these characters as far as they can go... Given the fact that there are 7 or 8 more Cross books written subsequently to this one, I can only hope that the series gets better.
  
  My complains are similar to those of other reviewers:
  
  1. I'm getting sick of the perfection of Alex Cross.  The man's a saintly father, saintly grandson, saintly lover, saintly charity worker, and saintly detective.  These traits hooked the reader and made Cross an intriguing character, but he's fast becoming too one-dimensional.
  
  2. The Cross/Sampson relationship.  As if we weren't sick enough of this already.  Every few chapters, we're reminded of the man-crush Cross and Sampson have on each other.  Sampson is so perfect in Cross's eyes that it becomes tiresome to hear about it every time Sampson enters a scene.
  
  3. The Cross/Christine Johnson relationship moves WAY too fast.  One moment Christine is still mourning the loss of her husband (who was viciously murdered 6 months prior in Jack & Jill) and freaks out over an innocent dinner date, and the next she and Cross are madly in love.  No development whatsoever, no line from Point A to Point B.
  
  4. I'm not sure Patterson could have written the dialogue between Cross and his children any more unrealistically.  Aren't these 7- and 9-year-old children?  He has more intelligent conversations with his kids than he does with Sampson or Kyle Craig.
  
  5. The entire novel is a series of pseudo-climaxes which are ultimately resolved by plot twists that seemingly arrive from left field.  The Soneji resolution was anti-climactic at best, and the Mr. Smith conclusion was unfulfilling
  