Criss Cross — An Alex Cross Thriller

A Question of Guilt

Criss Cross, the twenty-seventh Alex Cross novel, opens on a scene heavy with finality: Cross witnesses the execution of a killer he helped convict, watching a man die for crimes Cross was certain he committed. That certainty does not survive the night. Soon a new murder appears, bearing the dead man’s signature, accompanied by a taunting note signed simply “M” — and the implication is devastating. Either Cross helped send an innocent man to his death, or something far more cunning is at work, a mind deliberately mimicking the executed killer to torment the detective who put him in the chair.

This premise is the book’s strongest asset. Doubt about a past conviction is a uniquely unsettling foundation for a thriller, striking at the core of a detective’s identity: his judgment, his reliability, his right to be sure. Cross has spent his career trusting his reading of killers, and Criss Cross weaponizes that trust against him, planting the creeping fear that he got it catastrophically wrong. The novel’s psychological hook — a man forced to question whether his own certainty is a kind of arrogance — gives it a thematic weight that the series’ plot-driven entries often lack.

The Arrival of M

The taunting “M” who signs the notes becomes the book’s central engine and a new recurring nemesis for the series. As the killings mount and grow increasingly personal — reaching toward Cross’s family and the people he loves — M emerges as a cunning, theatrical adversary in the tradition of the series’ best villains, a mind playing an elaborate game with Cross as the target. The introduction of a fresh continuing antagonist is a smart move this deep into the run; after the repeated resurrections of Kyle Craig, the series needed new blood, and M provides it, setting up an arc that would extend into the books that follow.

M operates in the familiar Patterson mode of the genius-taunter: a villain who treats murder as a contest with the detective, leaving clues and provocations, always seeming a step ahead. The template is well-worn by this point in the series — Soneji, Shafer, the Mastermind, Craig, Mulch all worked variations on it — and Criss Cross does not entirely escape the sense of repetition. But M’s particular gambit, the assault on Cross’s certainty about a past execution, gives the familiar archetype a fresh and disturbing angle.

The Cost of the Open Ending

Criss Cross is built to unsettle rather than to resolve, and the “M” mystery is left deliberately unfinished, a thread carried forward rather than tied off. This is a calculated serialized choice, establishing M as a long-term threat whose full identity and design will unfold over subsequent novels. For readers invested in the series’ ongoing arc, the open ending is an enticement; for readers who want a complete, self-contained thriller, it is a frustration, the book stopping short of the satisfaction a closed case provides. As with the series’ other multi-book arcs, Criss Cross is best understood as the opening of a larger story.

Some of the plotting also leans on coincidence to keep the game moving — the kind of convenient turns that Patterson’s brisk pacing tends to encourage, and that strain credibility under scrutiny. M’s apparent ability to anticipate and orchestrate events occasionally tips toward the implausible, a recurring issue with the series’ most omniscient villains. But the central doubt — did Cross condemn the wrong man? — is strong enough to carry the reader past these seams, and the personal escalation keeps the stakes high.

Cross Off Balance

What makes Criss Cross effective is the way it keeps its hero off balance. The series’ great strength has always been Cross’s competence and insight, and the novel’s pleasure lies in watching that competence shaken — in seeing the detective who reads everyone else forced to question whether he can trust his own past readings. The taunting, personal nature of M’s crimes ensures that Cross cannot approach the case with professional detachment; it is aimed at him, at his record, at his family, and that focus gives the book the intimate menace the series does best.

The domestic anchors remain central. M’s escalation toward the people Cross loves reactivates the series’ most reliable source of dread, and the threat to the family on Fifth Street gives the puzzle-box plotting genuine emotional stakes. Patterson’s short-chapter momentum keeps the game moving briskly, and the unresolved ending leaves the reader eager for the next installment.

Where It Sits in the Series

Criss Cross is the twenty-seventh Alex Cross novel and the introduction of M, a new recurring nemesis whose arc continues into Fear No Evil and beyond. It reads best as the opening of that larger story rather than as a standalone, since its central mystery is deliberately left open. It follows the large-scale Target: Alex Cross and precedes Deadly Cross, returning the series to the intimate, taunting-villain register after the national-conspiracy spectacle.

Among the later novels, this is one of the more intriguing in premise — a cat-and-mouse thriller built on the unsettling possibility that Cross condemned an innocent man, introducing a promising new adversary even as it leans on the series’ familiar genius-taunter template.

The introduction of M is the most consequential thing Criss Cross does, and it speaks to the challenge of sustaining a series this long. After Kyle Craig had been resurrected one too many times, the franchise needed a fresh continuing antagonist, and M — defined from the start by an attack on Cross’s professional certainty rather than mere physical threat — offers a promising new direction. Whether the character ultimately rewards the investment is a question for the books that follow, but as an opening gambit M works, precisely because the doubt he plants is psychological rather than violent. The most effective threat to Alex Cross has never been a gun but a question, and Criss Cross understands that, building its dread from the possibility that the detective’s greatest asset — his judgment — might be his greatest liability.

Our rating: 3.7/5 — A twisty Alex Cross thriller that shakes the detective’s certainty with copycat killings signed ‘M,’ introducing a cunning new nemesis whose mystery is left tantalizingly open.