Pop Goes the Weasel is an older  (October 2000) one of the Alex Cross stories. Alex is a Washington D.C. homocide detective who fights against your typical thriller antagonists:  serial killers, work/life issues, and government politics. The series is quite long - 16 that I know of - and Pop is early in the series (#5).

This is the first James Patterson book I have read…although I have watched movie adaptations of both Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider (mostly because I like Morgan Freeman who plays the lead in both).  Given what I had heard about Patterson, the book pretty much lived up to my expactations…interesting murder story, nice touches of political reality on police work, and characters I came to care about. I’ve seen criticisms of the characterization being too shallow, but I liked Alex Cross quite a bit and found myself sympathizing with his quiet brooding throughout the middle of the book when all seems lost. That being said…in retrospect, I can’t really identify any other characters that I found myself liking particularly, mostly because I don’t feel like I got to know them. I wanted to know more about Alex’s fiancee because of the interesting position she is in. She loves Alex and wants to marry him, but she can’t let herself know that bad things always seem to happen to him and she couldn’t bear losing him.  Unfortunately, she is absent throughout most of the book.

Another benefit of this book was its ability to stand alone. It is definitely a continuation of the previous four Alex Cross novels, but there are sufficient references and explanations in this book to eliminate confusion for readers who started with Pop like I did. (NOTE: The only reason I started with this book is that I was looking for a Patterson novel to listen to on a recent road trip and this is the earliest novel that Audible.com had available.)

That’s what I liked about the book…and what will probably make me read more Alex Cross novels in the future. Here’s the flipside…when my wife and I were looking for an audio book to listen to on our trip, I suggested James Patterson because I knew she had read a couple of them and I wanted to. She was very surprised that I suggested Patterson because he is well-known for writing “chick-lit” (her word). My mind wandered back to the two Patterson movies and couldn’t figure out how they could even remotely be likened to chick-lit so I said lets try it anyway.  Well…she was right, of course, but only partially. The gruesome murder detail and adrenaline-filled gun fights that I expected were definitely there. However, between the girsly murders, the prose does drop immediately into a pool of chick-littiness. The love scenes between Alex and Christine are, for my taste, far too sickingly sweet. It was like we had suddenly dropped into a romance novel. It was very disrupting to me to jump from one literary style to the other so quickly.  I actually wondered aloud if the book was authored by two separate authors because the voice and style was so different. That is what lead me to my previous post on whether Alex Cross is an Author or a Brand.

There are also out of place tidbits like Alex’s best friend calling Alex “Sugar” throughout the book. I’m hoping that this nickname was explained in a previous novel…but even if it was, it seemed out of place. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not some macho guy who thinks that men should not express feelings for one another; in fact, quite the opposite. This nickname just seemed out of place for the characters.

**SPOILERS**

The other two pieces of the novel that really bothered me were Schafer’s (who, we learn early-on, is the killer) growing into Superman by the end of the novel and Christine’s year-long disappearance. When we first meet Schafer as a British intelligence officer stationed in Washington D.C., he seems like a quiet meek man, which is exactly what we’re supposed to believe in order to make the grisly nature of his murders all the more surprising. Great, I understand that. What bothered me was that by the end of the novel, Schafer has suddenly developed a bodybuilder’s muscles and a marathon runner’s endurance. It seemed quite sudden, but was necessary to support the climax of the novel. Maybe I missed it, but I can’t recall anything from the beginning portions of the book talking about Schafer’s physical prowess.

The other thing was Christine’s (Cross’s fiancee) being missing for more than a year. The implausibility of that to begin with was a little too much. But add to that the fact that we never hear about any escape attempts on her part or any backup plan Schafer has to make sure that Cross does not get Christine back. This is out of character for “The Weasel” since everything else is so meticulously planned out.

I definitely found parts of the book I didn’t appreciate or seemed out of character or context, but like I said above, I enjoyed the novel and will likely read or listen to other Alex Cross in the future.

Is James Patterson an author or a brand? I had never really considered this question for any author until I read this article on his popularity in the British library system: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/06/james-patterson-libraries.

The first thing that made me start to question things is the phrase “Patterson and the writers he employs…”  Writers? Employs? Call me naive, but I always thought that a writer writes. A team also writes, but gets full credit as a team. Check out the cover for 7th Heaven to the right. Is it a problem that Patterson wrote this book with Maxine Paetro? No, of course not. I’m all in favor of group-authored books. But look at the credit.  Not only is Patterson’s name roughly 20 times larger than Paetro’s, but the check out the color contrast. It’s very easy to see and read Patterson’s name while Paetro’s blends in. In fact, I missed it when I first looked at the cover.

So the question comes down to…is this really a problem? Is it wrong to capitalize on the popularity of an author to sell books, even if (s)he is not the only author? No, probably not. So long as the credit is given as due. Did Patterson write 20 times more of the book then Patterson? Probably not. If so, why would he even have another author?

My wife and I were on a long car trip recently and listened to Pop Goes the Weasel. It was the first Patterson book I read and I quite enjoyed it. Even before I learned about Patterson employment of additional authors, I suggested to my wife that the book sounded like it was written by two authors. The description of the gruesome murders was quite detailed and the dirty streets of Washington DC were described wonderfully. Then the love story description definitely fulfilled my wife’s expectation of “chick lit.” So the prose seemed to flip back and forth from Stephen King to Danielle Steele. But the cover lists Patterson as the only author.

So the question remains…does it matter that Patterson has built a brand name with hired authors? I’m not sure that I’d be comfortable with that personally. What do you think?