James Patterson is definitely not a writer's writer. Kiss the Girls, especially, demonstrates very little in the way of actual writing skill, though it does manage to be somewhat entertaining. Patterson comes across as a gifted storyteller who puts very little effort into his craft, seemingly working on several books simultaneously and moving on to future projects far too prematurely. As a result, you can read his books while half-asleep and not miss anything meaningful. In other words, there are no subtleties. To boost excitement, Patterson uses a lot of annoyingly obvious tricks, like italicizing random words for emphasis, adding exclamation marks to questions (i.e. "How are you?!"), and writing chapters too small to allow for boredom to sink in. Along Came A Spider (the first in the Alex Cross series) contained some good writing and character development, but Kiss The Girls is content simply to ride on Spider's coattails and coast toward the next Alex Cross adventure. There is an awkward romantic angle that doesn't pay off, and I found myself really annoyed that Cross would come up with crucial information pertaining to the case, only to put himself in danger before sharing it with anyone. Seems very, very careless to me. Besides, the mystery aspects are pretty weak in this one. The way that Cross finds the killer's secret hideout is mostly due to luck and the fact that he decides to start shooting at a tree in the middle of the woods for no good reason. This is one of those rare cases where the movie is superior to the book, although Morgan Freeman is so woefully miscast as Cross that great liberties had to be taken in adapting the story.