I purchased this book for my own personal collection.
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: November 17, 2025
Summary:
Return of the Spider is the stunning companion novel to Along Came a Spider, the New York Times bestselling classic thriller from the world’s most popular storyteller.
Enter the thrilling world of the #1 bestselling detective series that inspired the Prime Video show, Cross.
Along Came a Spider introduced Detective Alex Cross to readers around the globe and delivered an unsurpassed Cross—named the “human superhero” by The New York Times—versus Gary Soneji, who the Lexington-Herald Leader called the “most deliciously wicked character since Hannibal Lecter”. But that wasn’t their first meeting …
Police discover that Soneji kept a murder book, Profiles in Homicidal Genius, detailing his transformation from substitute teacher to hardened serial killer—including clues that imply missteps that Alex Cross may have made a rookie homicide detective.
Now, Alex must retrace the steps of that long-ago investigation and face … the Return of the Spider.
My thoughts:
I’m so glad I was able to get caught up in the Alex Cross series in time to read this latest installment as soon as it came out…and what a thrilling read it was! I often think about going back to the beginning and starting this series over – those early books were some of the best ones in the series – and with this book, Patterson takes us back there, to when Alex Cross and John Sampson were just starting out as young detectives and came across what was to be one of their biggest nemesis – Gary Soneji. It seems a new discovery has been made with connections to Soneji and there are some interesting discoveries made, including the fact that just maybe Cross got some things wrong back then…
I loved the structure of this book – how it was set in present day with the discovery of these new items related to Gary Soneji and then as Alex is going through them, it takes him back to those early days of him and Sampson on the force. That is the bulk of the book and we as the reader are taken right back there as if time were just turned back. I loved seeing how green they were both, so eager to get in on the action, but also we see Cross as a young family man, just married to his first wife, Maria and a very young Nana Mama.
This was such an interesting way to keep momentum in this series going, keep older characters alive – for now…I do so worry about Nana Mama! – and bring back such dreaded evil ones that we have all come to love in our wickedly devilish hearts – come on now, I can’t be the only one that was slightly happy to see a book involving Gary Soneji now, can I? And we see how anything dealing with Soneji, even after all these years still impacts both Cross and Sampson…this is why this series still remains one of my favorites and I cannot wait to see what comes next!!
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