Just when Alex thought his life was calming down into a routine of patients and therapy sessions, he finds himself back in the game this time to catch a criminal mastermind like no other. A spate of elaborate murders in Washington D.C. have the whole East Coast on edge. They are like nothing Alex Cross and his new girlfriend, Detective Brianna Stone, have ever seen. With each murder, the case becomes increasingly complex. There's only one thing Alex knows: the killer adores an audience.
Alex Cross travels to Los Angeles to hunt for a killer more brutal and ambitious than he's ever encountered a woman who has it in for Hollywood's hottest players. FBI agent Alex Cross is on vacation with his family at Disneyland when he gets a call from the Director. A well-known actress was shot outside her home in Beverly Hills. Shortly afterward, an editor for the Los Angeles Times receives an e-mail describing the murder in vivid detail. Alex quickly learns that this is not an isolated incident. The killer, known as Mary Smith, has done this before and plans to kill again.
Two joggers are found murdered in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and the killings are bizarrely reminiscent of a Washington, D.C. case that Alex Cross has been unable to solve. He is called to San Francisco, and then learns of similar murders in eight cities from Las Vegas to Charleston. Together with a female San Francisco detective, Cross plunges into a menacing world where posing explodes into bloodlust and frenzy, even as he is being stalked by a terrifying criminal who calls himself the Mastermind.
Killer Gary Soneji is back, filled with hatred and gaining revenge on detective Alex Cross. Nothing, not even death itself, is going to stand in his way.
As two serial killers terrorize different regions of America, the FBI begins to suspect that the two are competing with each other, and Washington, D.C. police detective Alex Cross embarks on a personal quest to find the perpetrators.
