Cross Justice by James Patterson is a psychological mystery novel. I only recommend this novel for those readers, who like to get inside the characters’ heads. As for myself, I am not impressed or blown away by this novel.
The lead character, Alex Cross, takes his family to a small town in North Carolina, where he was born. Both he and his wife are Washington D.C. detectives. Alex Cross was a former agent of the Behavioral Analysis Unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. His niece is representing his cousin in a murder trial. Alex Cross is not convinced immediately that his cousin is innocent of the charges and maintains that he is offering his help on the defense only to represent the murdered victim.
Patterson created a main plot for Cross Justice, narrated in the first person, and a subplot, narrated in the third person. Alex Cross narrated the things he had witnessed and done. The all-knowing narrator described events that Alex Cross was not a witness to. The book begins with an unrelated murder and murderer in Florida. Then, readers have to push through the slow-paced family reunions in Part One. As the novel progresses, the unrelated murders or murder investigations in Florida are described in the third-person narrative. Alex Cross visits Florida and joins that investigation. Therefore, the plot lines “cross” at that point. At the very end, Patterson reveals to readers why so much time is spent by Patterson in Part One on the family reunions, background, and memories of Alex Cross and his extended family. Even though I understand the reasons why this was done, it doesn’t change the fact that I was bored throughout most of this book.
Given James Patterson’s fame, I am very disappointed by this novel. I listened to the e-audiobook version of this book. This book begins slowly. There is a lot of dialogue connected with family reunions and backgrounds in Part One. I had to force myself to continue listening to the e-audiobook until interesting information about the murder was disclosed in Part Two of the book. The e-audiobook plays music to let you know when a dangerous event or action is about to occur. It was an attempt to make a boring action scene sound exciting. If the chapter was not dealing with the murder, the trial, or the discovery of new evidence, I was bored by this story.
This is the first novel by James Patterson that I have ever read or listened to. I am not bored by psychological murder mystery movies. If this book was made into a movie, I would be terribly bored with it. My interest only peaked when the story focused on the murder, the trial, and the discovery of new evidence. The moments of action or danger seemed quite mild. The book had a very slow pace throughout. If you decide to read this book out of curiosity, push through the boredom of Part One. You won’t get to anything interesting about the murder mystery of the main plot until Part Two.
Despite my disappointment, James Patterson’s novel, Cross Justice, is well written in terms of its narration, authorship, and plots. This book contains chapters written in the first person narrative and in the third person narrative. I have never seen that before where an author switches between two styles of narration. I have always thought the narration had to be consistent throughout a book. For example, Alex Cross narrated most of the story in first person narrative. An all-knowing, third person narrator described events in Florida, not witnessed by Alex Cross.
Patterson’s authorship for Cross Justice in terms of dialogue, grammar, organization, and description of settings was very strong. It is clear from reading Cross Justice that Patterson is a talented author, but this story’s pace was far too slow. I did like his use of both first-person and third-person narration.
I was not impressed by Patterson’s depiction of Black Americans. This book spends a lot of time inside the mind of Alex Cross, who is Black American. When Patterson wrote for this character’s narration of events, Alex Cross described other Black Americans as “African-American.” The over-whelming majority of Black Americans are not going to call themselves or others like themselves “African-American” inside their minds or among each other. They are going to call themselves and others like themselves “Black” if one is a product of American slavery or just a person of any group within the African diaspora. Black Americans will describe voluntary immigrants from Africa to the United States “African.” Afrocentric Black Americans call themselves “Africans,” because they are ashamed to call themselves “Black.” Assimilationist, accommodationist, and integrationist Black Americans will describe themselves as “African-American” only when there is at least one non-black person present, because they are ashamed to call themselves “Black” also and being culturally and politically “Black” is offensive to members of other races and ethnicities. They bleach the “black” from their identity by calling themselves “voluntary immigrants” or “African-Americans” rather than to resist assimilation by other races and ethnicities to accept them as “Blacks” or “Black Americans.” A new habit now is for Black American celebrities to describe themselves as “Brown.” Again, they are ashamed to call themselves “Black.” In the absence of non-blacks, Black Americans will overwhelmingly describe themselves as “Black,” so this will also be the case in their inner-thoughts as well. Identity is fluid in response to social conditions. Even when the black bourgeoisie is using their wealth, power, and prestige to pass themselves off as voluntary immigrants to the United States or “dark-skinned, honorary whites,” it is unbelievable that any of them would refer to themselves or another Black American as “African-American” within their own minds and private thoughts. If Patterson had recognized that Black Americans change their identities in response to the presence of non-blacks or if he had recognized that the Black American bourgeoisie uses wealth, power, prestige, college education, interracial relationships, geographic proximity to whites of all ethnicities, the possession of a government job, and the “n-word” as weapons to oppress and demean impoverished Black Americans, I would have been impressed. Therefore, Patterson’s fictional depictions and events, involving Black Americans, come across as inauthentic and manufactured to fit within a false, mainstream ideal of what a “good” Black American is. I realize Cross Justice is a fictional tale, but I would have been impressed by ugly realities, woven into a fictional story.
Another characteristic about the fictional Black Americans in Cross Justice is how blindly religious they are. The story closed with the characters’ believing in the divine intervention of god, setting their fictional world right. In the beginning of the story, the murder mysteries in North Carolina and Florida appear not to have a connection. They clearly connect later in the story when Alex Cross travels to Florida. However, the connection is not Alex Cross alone. There is another person, connecting those two unrelated murder mysteries. The story ends as though god made everything right. You may have heard Black American Christians say, “Everything happens for a reason.” In this story, families appear to be reunited by the divine intervention of god. You may have also heard Black American Christians say, “The truth will set you free.” One character does something extreme to expose the truth towards the end of the novel that would put him in prison in the real world regardless of his good intentions. Yet, Patterson wrote the ending for this character to walk free and not face prosecution. Divine intervention at work. Right? After all, the title of the book is Cross Justice as in the religious symbol, the Christian cross. The Cross family believes in the Christian god and the Christian god, in turn, ensures justice and freedom for this family. This would not be the case in reality regardless of how faithful the person was, but James Patterson is the “god” of this novel and he made up the unrealistic, happy ending to fit within the worldview of Black American Christians for his mainstream audience. The main plot and subplot were initially separate and unrelated, running parallel to each other, and then, these two plot lines “crossed” or intersected later in the novel. Cross Justice is also about family. Characters are “crossing” the color lines. Bloodlines are “crossed” in terms of families’ being racially “mixed.” The train is an important symbol in this story, because train tracks are something, which people must “cross” on a regular basis to get from point A to point B. In literature about race relations in the south, sometimes authors describe the train tracks as a geographic marker, separating the white side of town from the black side of town; although, Cross Justice gave no indication of this. The Christian cross and the act of crossing are both religious, symbolic, and structural themes within this novel.
Just by reading this book, it appears as though James Patterson did his research on Black Americans by attending church with them or maybe he regularly only associates himself with Black American Christians, who engaged in the ritual attendance of church. If this was the case, I think he needs to branch out and interview Black Americans, who don’t attend the Christian churches, so he can gain more accurate depictions of Black Americans as a diverse population. Many Christian Black Americans think divine intervention or god is at work when everything goes their way, but they blame things on the devil or unchristian people, who don’t engage in the ritual attendance of Christian churches, when things don’t go their way. Another belief is “god has a plan,” but they don’t know what it is when bad things happen to good people. When bad things happen to people, who don’t go to church, they say the bad events happened, because the person does not have Jesus in their life or “not living right with god.” This worldview is unrealistic. What would have been realistic is if Patterson wrote some Black American characters, whose worldview was grounded in science and history. Instead of divine or demonic intervention, the outcome of events are dictated by social forces, social groups, power, prestige, wealth, history, politics, life chances, networks of individuals and groups, etc. Blindly religious Black Americans exist, but that does not mean that the divinity they believe in has any effect on the American justice system when it comes to Black Americans accused of a crime in the real world. In Cross Justice, Patterson created a fictional world where an innocent Black American was set free of a crime he didn’t commit and a guilty Black American, who clearly broke the law in front of numerous witnesses to compel the truth, remained free as well. In reality, we all know that is not going to happen. Yes, Cross Justice is fictional, but even fiction has to mirror reality in some ways to have cultural relevance.
Cross Justice by James Patterson is slow-paced, boring, inauthentic, and unrealistic. If you love a great mystery, I would not recommend this book. I liked the fact that he used two types of narration in this novel. I acknowledge Patterson is a creative writer, but this story was too mild and too slow for me. After reading Cross Justice, I am not eager to read another book by James Patterson. However, I hope I do not discourage others from discovering the book for themselves. You can take my word for it and steer clear of Cross justice or you can read it and come to your own conclusions. Maybe, you won’t see things as I do. If you do, I would love to hear your assessments of this book.
Reference
Patterson, James. Cross Justice. E-Audiobook. Ashland: Blackstone Audio, 2015.
Links:
James Patterson’s Official Site
Cross Justice on James Patterson’s site
Cross Justice on jamespattersonbooklist.com
Cross Justice on Barnes and Noble
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