KISS THE GIRLS  
JAMES PATTERSON
Warner Books, Inc. 1995

 What could be more distracting on the beach than a "sit on the edge of your seat" murder-mystery by James Patterson. Oh, I know that this has been around for a long time, but I just needed to fill in some cracks in his long list of mystery novels, like "Virgin" and "See How They Run".  I have a certain affinity for Patterson since he introduced, detective Dr. Alex Cross, in "Along Came A Spider". Alex Cross was an anomaly in the DC Police Force. He came to them after finishing his PhD in Psychology and quickly solved the only serial killings DC had ever known by capturing the child serial murderer Gary Soneji. A story not unlike the Wayne Williams' killings in Atlanta, but interestingly set in Potomac, Maryland, a bedroom community of DC.  Alex is always involved with his family and his neighborhood, but as yet unmarried. So it is not unusual that the novel begins with a neighborhood child being stabbed and Alex rushing him to the hospital. Upon his return he is informed that his niece Naomi has been missing three days in North Carolina while attending Duke University. With his partner Sampson, they drive to Durham to encounter the local law. Remember Virgil Tibbs in Mississippi.  They learn that over the past few years there have been many missing girls in the Research Triangle. All seem to have been beautiful college coeds from various backgrounds.  Their bodies have never turned up until now and Alex's first job is to make an identity, if he can.  Through this encounter he meets the local Detectives, Ruskin and Sikes and the FBI's Special Agent Joyce Kinney.
 From the very first chapter we have a description of Casanova's first killing of a gorgeous Miami cheerleader, who has brushed him off in school. Casanova, the masterful lover, has since graduated to North Carolina, where he stalks his magnificent victims and kidnaps them for sexual trysts before he kills them. He has amassed quite a collection of a dozen women imprisoned in a subterranean house in the North Carolina Pines.  Prior to kidnapping them he has stalked them, learning their habits and dress sizes, so that he can have them dress up for him before he rapes them. Oh, I know that this demeans women, who are the perennial victims, but this fiction will not make homicidal victims of those of us who like to dress up anyway.  Actually one victim is depicted cross dressing with her boyfriend, whom Casanova finds in bed. But wouldn�t you know it, he kills the guy and takes the girl.  Throughout this novel he is described as a calculating perfectionist and maybe a doctor or someone with medical knowledge. So evidently he could tell who was the "Gyrl".
 Now Patterson introduces an original psycho-drama with the concept of "Twinning". A second homicidal serial killer is at work in California and it appears that Casanova and the Gentleman Caller are communicating with each other, maybe even competing. Alex follows some leads to California and almost catches the Gentleman Caller who is a famous Plastic Surgeon in Hollywood. The killer escapes after silencing a reporter with whom he had been communicating. It's all so gruesome that I can't describe it. And where is the mass murderer headed but back to NC, where he can collaborate with Casanova, his old partner in crime.
But Casanova has made one terrible mistake when he kidnapped his last victim Kate McTiernan, a young Medical Resident, with a Black Belt in the Martial Arts. Kate has the determination to escape even while drugged and so she does in a dramatic escape. She has acquired information about the masked Casanova and his lair, which she imparts to Alex from her hospital bed. But would you believe Casanova has access to her hospital room and makes a second unsuccessful attempt on her life.  At this point you realize that Casanova has been right under your nose, but you can't guess who it is because he has set up a fall guy on campus.
 Now as in all Patterson novels, "Good triumphs over Evil", and Alex rescues his niece Naomi from the Dungeon after encountering both of the killers on their territory. The killers are unmasked and die as they should in a death to the end struggle. If you didn't recognize Ashley Judd as Kate and Morgan Freeman as Alex on the cover of the movie version , you are old enough to remember, that their hasn't been a "Collector" as masterful as Terence Stamp, our own "Priscilla", since the Sixties. Luv Ya, Cerise