Hammer has accepted the challenge of Richmond, Virginia's police department to try and reverse the escalating crime statistics in the city. She brings with her Deputy Chief Virginia West and Andy Brazil, now a full-time police officer. They find a lot of things they are all too familiar with - teenage gangs, a rash of robberies at cash dispensers, street corner drug-dealing, racial tensions, too many people with too many guns and a cardiac inducing lack of parking spaces.
At the unveiling of the most miraculous bra in fashion history, Nora's boss is found trussed up in pantyhose and shot execution style. To find the killer, Nora must shadow the most glamorous suspects in Philadelphia-including a bad-boy designer and a pair of luscious twin models. Though they're used to "murder with style", cross your fingers for the Blackbird sisters, because this time, high society has never stooped so low.
Somebody is murdering Hollywood's A-list. Her calling card: "You've got mail." On a family vacation, FBI agent Alex Cross is asked to investigate the shooting of a top actress and an e-mail sent to the Los Angeles Times with shocking details about the murder, signed Mary Smith. More killings and more e-mails follow, and Mary Smith is getting better every time. To hunt down this merciless killer of Tinseltown's elite, Cross must navigate a world where the stars sip San Pellegrino at the Ivy as hopefuls hover around studio gates with 8 X 10 glossies.
Fans of James Patterson's resourceful cop Alex Cross will be relieved to find that he's back on familiar territory with Violets Are Blue--and, more importantly, that this is one of the best Alex Cross thrillers yet.
Alex Cross finally took the plunge at the end of Four Blind Mice (2002) and joined the FBI. The training is a little beneath Cross, who has spent years working with the FBI on the toughest cases, but he dutifully attends classes until he's pulled out to consult on a case. Wealthy women have been disappearing around the country. The latest, a judge's wife, was snatched at a shopping mall. It appears these women (and soon several young men as well) are being abducted and sold to people who have "selected" them and paid a hefty sum.
