Detective Alex Cross is back. There have been gruesome murders in the impoverished, prostitute-ridden, black sections of southeast Washington, D.C., and Cross is forced to investigate the deaths on his own time and behind the department’s back. It is a matter of personal conviction for Cross until the killer involves Cross’s family. If you read the opening chapter of Pop Goes the Weasel all three pages you’re hooked. From the author of Kiss the Girls, which was made into the thriller starring Morgan Freeman, Pop Goes the Weasel is just as cinematic. Written almost in movie scenes, it is a story told from the alternating points of view of both the killer and the detective. Patterson’s latest is definitely cat-and-mouse and allows us a front-row seat to the games which is exactly what this is to the killer.

Pop Goes the Weasel continues Patterson’s attempt to break a few mystery stereotypes. In a literary (and movie) world filled with white detectives and black thugs, drug pushers, and prostitutes, it is refreshing to read about a man like Alex Cross a psychologist, detective, FBI liaison, and a widower trying to raise a family and be effective at work at the same time. He’s a positive role model, an educated man, and just happens to be successful enough to drive a Porsche. He’s also a monogamous man in love.

There’s a social issue here that may or may not be true depending upon one’s interpretation of the statistics. Cross believes that the killers of established white people are found much quicker than the killers of lower-class minorities. It’s certainly the case in this novel and, if true, it’s a horrifying fact. Patterson certainly has a point to make, but rarely does he preach it, instead allowing readers to reach their own conclusions.

Pop Goes the Weasel is easily one of the most believable and well-written genre mysteries of 1999.

Clay Stafford is a writer and filmmaker.

Okay, so there are sharks. And reconstituted dinosaurs. Unfriendly nuclear powers and hostile aliens and berserk asteroids. But the flu? Somehow, as a serious threat to the well-being of the world population, getting the flu has rated pretty low on my list of terminal things to worry about. Not any more. The flu in question, of course, is the Spanish Lady, the horrendous version of influenza that precipitated the most lethal medical event in history and killed more people after World War I than the war itself. The First Horseman, a potential nightmare encased in fiction, proceeds on the theory that, under certain circumstances, that flu bug could kill every unimmunized person on earth. And, luckily for readers, if not the world, there are three bodies buried in the Siberian permafrost from which the deadly virus can be recreated. After a good deal of hop, skip, and jumping around between places and persons, the story settles down to watch as the bad guys/girls, members of an off-the-wall religious cult led by a charismatic madman, work to preserve the endangered natural world by simply destroying that inconvenient scourge, all human life. Of course, the good guys/girls labor to foil them, taking considerable physical mistreatment as well as falling in love in their spare time. It’s the perfect scenario for the next big movie thriller, although filmmakers may find it difficult to express the apparent expertise displayed by the author about both government and medical processes.

The first horseman reference touches on the famous four horsemen of the New Testament Apocalypse. But you knew that, of course. Whether or not he was originally identified with the spread of pestilence, (the Book of Revelation is not clear on that point), the apocalyptic connection indicates nasty consequences for an unknowing world. John Case, who wrote the bestseller The Genesis Code, is a pseudonymous award-winning investigative reporter in Washington, D.

C. He plants a mischievous hint at the end of the story that may make readers think twice about its status as fiction, but I am hopeful we can dismiss this as creative inspiration. It’s bad enough, really, to know there are Charles Manson and David Koresh types out there who, like Solange in this book, seem to magnetically attract their disciples’ loyalty through sadistic and abusive practices. The author effectively builds the reservoir of dread that fuels all good thrillers as he portrays the twisted mind at work turning ordinary people into amoral uncaring monsters.

The world survives, but, every time the flu bug goes around from now on (especially in April or May), those of us who have read The First Horseman will not feel entirely secure until the symptoms subside. Maude McDaniel is a freelance writer in Cumberland, MD.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Bloodstream is a deliciously frightening story guaranteed to send chills up your spine an added bonus this time of year.

Newly widowed Dr. Claire Elliot has left a successful career in Baltimore to move with her son, Noah, to the small resort town of Tranquillity, Maine. After the death of his father, Noah had fallen in with bad company and run afoul of the law. Claire had decided that a move to Tranquillity would make for a fresh start for both mother and son.

However, Noah is unhappy in school, struggling to fit in among students who have known each other since birth. And Claire is beginning to have her own doubts about the move as it becomes apparent that the locals are more than a little suspicious of the big city doctor who has taken over the practice of their longtime and beloved physician. Tranquillity it seems, is anything but for Claire and her son.

Then the violence begins. One of Claire’s teenage patients opens fire in his high school biology class, killing the teacher and wounding several students. His parents blame Claire for taking him off a medication prescribed by his former physician, but Claire is certain that something else led the boy to commit such a terrible and unexpected act. When she tries to order a blood test for drugs, Claire is abruptly dismissed as the boy’s doctor.

As the violence escalates quiet children are suddenly given to vicious outbursts, cruelty to animals, then another inexplicable murder Claire desperately searches for a cause. Amid wild rumors of Satanic cults and local witches, she considers everything from illegal drugs to the small blue mushrooms that grow in the woods and are sometimes eaten by Tranquillity’s teens. And what about the strange phosphorescent green glow that Claire and Lincoln Kelly, the local sheriff, see coming from the local lake? Then Claire discovers what many of the local already know this isn’t the first time that seemingly normal teenagers have committed unspeakable acts of violence in Tranquillity. There were murders in 1887 and again almost 50 years ago. Warren Emerson, one of the murderous teens from five decades ago, still lives in Tranquillity. Cast out from the community, he lives in virtual isolation in the woods with only a cat and his memories for companionship. Could Warren, wonders Claire, hold the key to what’s happening to Tranquillity’s children? Gerritsen, whose two previous medical thrillers, Harvest and Life Support terrorized their way onto bestseller lists, looks to have done it again Bloodstream is best read with the lights on and the doors securely locked.

Lucinda Dyer is a publicist and freelance writer in Franklin, Tennessee.

In Quicksilver, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens combine intrigue with an impressive extrapolation of the state of the art in orbital weapons. What begins as a project to increase the country’s surveillance satellite capabilities suddenly emerges as a weapon of unprecedented destructive power. Most of the action takes place in the Pentagon, one of the nation’s most secure buildings. The new National Infrastructure Agency is located well below the basement. The physical security of this latest command node is as great as the secrecy surrounding its activities protection that includes placing blast doors throughout the building and making efforts to root out terrorists. This is the situation faced by the President when well-armed terrorists take over the Pentagon. Their infiltration takes advantage of a ceremony celebrating Russia’s entry into NATO. Bureaucratic reflexes among the President’s advisors frustrate his ability to deal with the crisis. Quicksilver demonstrates the authors’ grasp of scientific theory and security measures surrounding the country’s military space program. Beyond the ingenuity that allows the terrorists to penetrate the Pentagon’s most secret project is the awesome power they demonstrate by destroying the center directing the nation’s military satellites, including Quicksilver. The tension builds as the President directs the country’s most powerful weapons to hone in on the terrorists’ headquarters. The result is a spell-binding tale and a new standard for techno-thrillers. John Messer once served in the Pentagon.

Normally, when I read a book I either like it or I don’t like it. I don’t usually feel like inviting its author over for a pajama party. But this one had that effect on me. I’d never read anything by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith before, I’m sorry to say, but I think I’ve got a crush on her.

An American Killing is a murder mystery/thriller, narrated by a true-crime writer clearly based on the real-life crime writer Ann Rule (who, I bet, never figured she’d turn up as the protagonist of a novel). Rule, like the heroine of An American Killing, was a journalist whose longtime office buddy was arrested for a mass murder. In Rule’s case the friend and murder suspect was Ted Bundy; in the novel his name is different, but the details of the murders are pretty much the same. The arrest changed Rule’s life: at first convinced that a tragic error had been made, she decided to look into the case, and was deeply shaken to discover there’d been no mistake. She became fascinated by the idea that there are people who are evil inside, but who look and act just like you and me. She wrote a book about the Bundy case kind of a true-crime version of Hannah Arrendt’s book The Banality of Evil about the trial of Adolph Eichman. Rule’s book was a bestseller and led to a series of true-crime books that explored the same ground one about a mother who shoots her own children; another about a poisoner. Denise Burke’s career, in An American Killing, has been identical, up until now. This case is different: this one investigates a triple murder for which an innocent man is framed. In addition to her professional life, Denise is also married to a key member of the Clinton administration. (Hillary Clinton calls her occasionally to ask stuff like, what do regular mothers wear to school on Parents’ Day?) She’s got a complicated history, two teenage kids, a dog, a large house with a dining room in dire need of redecorating, and a summer place in Rhode Island. She manages this female I-can-have-everything-and-do-it-brilliantly prototype with humor, a heartwarming lack of efficiency, and exactly the right amount of cynicism. At one point it’s got to be either the dining room or the affair with the Rhode Island congressman, and she chooses the congressman probably, in retrospect, a bad choice. Still, that choice sets in motion the series of events that frame this book.

Plot aside (and I don’t mean to downplay it the plot is good), there is a sensibility at work here that is clear-eyed, contemporary, and incredibly charismatic. Tirone Smith has written four other novels. Prepare, as I will, to hunt them up and read them. And, Mary-Ann, if you’re ever in New Jersey, definitely call.

Nan Goldberg is a freelance writer in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Readers know they can count on Robin Cook for a thriller that never lets up in intensity until the final page, and Vector is no different. It’s a true page-turner, with a little levity thrown in for good measure.

Yuri Davydov is a Russian emigre who drives a cab in New York City. He hates it. He has also begun to hate his adopted country because he believes it has denied him his slice of the American Dream. He is snarled at by customers, ignored by other drivers, and pushed to near distraction by his wife, a compulsive eater and chronic complainer.

Davydov has the skills to strike out at the whole world. In his homeland, he was a technician in the Soviet biological weapons program his last assignment being at a plant identified only as Vector.

He falls in with a couple of firemen named Curt and Steve who find out about Davydov’s capabilities. They have a deadly project of their own they want to blow up a federal building. Davydov would simply like to release anthrax in Central Park and kill a few thousand people.

He has already experimented on a few poor-tipping fares and sundry other souls. Now, at the behest of Curt and Steve, Davydov decides that his wife must be killed for security reasons so he kills her.

In the meantime, Drs. Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery begin to witness some rather curious things in their capacity as forensic pathologists, including the fact that a young, reasonably healthy black woman is dead of respiratory failure. She is Yuri Davydov’s wife. But before Stapleton can get through the bureaucracy to request permission for an autopsy, she is cremated.

Stapleton begins to think that a series of curious coincidences is really a string of murders, but nobody except Laurie believes him; his superiors and colleagues are skeptical. Some think Stapleton is off his rocker, to put it mildly.

It becomes a race against time for Jack and Laurie to solve what amounts to a jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces. If they do not, thousands may die in a city most vulnerable to biological weapons. Cook has a super-charged story to tell, and as usual, he tells it very well. Lloyd Armour is a retired newspaper editor.

In his latest international thriller, The Marching Season, Daniel Silva continues the unique blend of fact and fiction that gives his stories the immediacy and urgency of the evening news. Michael Osbourne, the CIA officer who narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a former KGB killer, code named October in The Mark of the Assassin, retired from the agency and eased into a comfortable, domestic routine with his Wall Street lawyer wife Elizabeth and their young twins. The Marching Season begins several years later when Douglas Cannon, Elizabeth’s father and a retired U.

S. senator, accepts appointment as the American ambassador to Great Britain with a commitment to advance a fragile peace agreement in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Accords. Despite its acceptance by the country’s major political factions, the agreement also spawned a few small extremist groups dedicated to destruction of the peace process. One such group, the Ulster Freedom Brigade (UFB), begins a bombing campaign and then sets its sights on Douglas Cannon as its next high-profile target. Michael’s longtime friend lures him back into service in the agency’s effort to reinforce British security measures to protect the new ambassador.

The expected attack on Cannon and Osbourne’s role are reminiscent of a younger Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s Patriot Games. Silva’s narrative has the same effect on this earlier fictional creation as tilting a holographic picture; the reader suddenly sees a new and intriguing perspective.

With The Marching Season, Daniel Silva confirms his position as a frontrunner to succeed Tom Clancy as America’s foremost source of international intrigue fiction. Clearly, Osbourne has a great future; one that Silva will share with his many admirers.

John Messer is a freelance reviewer in Ludington, Michigan.