Along Came a Spider

The ending of this was really well done but shocking which I liked.
This is the first book in the Alex Cross series.
Alex Cross is an african american police detective with a psychology degree who is investigating a series of murders in the black community when he and his partner (Sammy) is pulled off the case to investigate the high profile kidnapping case involving the child of an actress and the child of the minister of finance.
Patterson does a really good job building the suspense and setting the scene without making gorey descriptions. What he fails at miserably though is writing a sex scene that doesn't make you either spit take you hot beverage or just laugh at the patheticness of. Seriously, they so are terrible that I hope that is was nominated for Bad Sex in Fiction Award.
Thankfully that is not what I am reading these books for and I look forward to reading more in this series.