![]() ![]() Peter Westin is also captured at the farm. They raid the vampire stronghold, rescue Jamilla, and kill the Alexander brothers as well as their pet tiger. When Cross learns Jamilla has disappeared, he returns to California and, with the help of Craig and the FBI, tracks her location to the farm. The brothers take her to the farm where they were raised, which now serves as a vampire commune. Jamilla Hughes, back in California, traces a fresh set of clues to Santa Cruz and falls into the clutches of William and Michael, who have been following the detective’s progress. Although the magicians, Charles and Daniel, reveal themselves to be ringleaders of practicing vampires, their value to the investigation quickly vanishes when they themselves are murdered. The next scheduled venue for the magic show is in New Orleans, so Cross and company race to Louisiana. While recovering from the subsequent infection, Cross studies the case and notices a connection between the path of a traveling magic show and that of the killing spree. Cross arrives in Charlotte, where he’s bitten while interrogating a young man who lives in a local vampire commune. Hanging bodies drained of blood then turn up in South Carolina, and more again in North Carolina. As Cross talks with a woman who escaped from her would-be killers, she says, “The two men who attacked me were vampires.” Despite a number of leads, Cross and his associates are stymied. More vampire-style murders occur in the area. William, in a “delicious reverie,” recalls the evening they killed and drained a beautiful blond boy among the poseurs at the church. The Church of the Vampire, an actual church where “the usual dreaded role-players came,” is one of the brothers’ favorite haunts. They watch news coverage of their Golden Gate killings with satisfaction, assuring themselves that they’re “an incredibly big deal” and “the next big thing.” To sustain their vampire lifestyle, they break into funeral homes and feed on fresh bodies they also prey upon unsuspecting pseudo-vampires at role-playing gatherings. Meanwhile, brothers William and Michael Alexander, who believe themselves to be true vampires, engage in blood-sucking and murder on the Sire’s orders. Although Cross is dubious about the existence of actual vampires, Westin declares they are real, and, moreover, that there is a master vampire called the Sire. Cross also interviews a vampire scholar from the University of California, Professor Peter Westin. He visits the Fang and Claw Parlor and discovers that serious members of vampire role-playing clubs wear custom-made fangs. This evidence steers Cross’s detective work into the remarkable subculture of vampire poseurs. A dental expert concludes that the male victim was attacked by a tiger and that the female was bitten by a person wearing fang extensions. Inspector Jamilla Hughes meets Cross at the airport and takes him to the morgue. Loathe to leave his kids for work yet again, especially with the Mastermind on the loose, Cross nevertheless flies to San Francisco. ![]() Strange as such ritualistic killings are, they’re similar to another case Cross had investigated without success in DC. Moments later, two men attack the woman, sinking unnatural fangs into her flesh.īack in DC, Cross answers another call from his longtime FBI collaborator, Kyle Craig, who reports that two bite-riddled, blood-drained bodies have been found hanging upside down from trees in Golden Gate Park. A man and woman jog through the evening fog in Golden Gate Park, trailed by unusual growls. In the next chapter, the narrative jumps to San Francisco and exchanges Cross’s first-person point of view for a third-person perspective. Alarmed by the chilling phone call, Cross rushes back to his family. Cross’s three young children live with his grandmother in Washington, DC. He receives a call from the Mastermind, who perversely prides himself on butchering the woman and taunts Cross with threats that his family will be next. The novel opens in Virginia, where Cross is at the scene of his partner’s grisly slaughter. As he follows the trail of bodies from California to South Carolina to Louisiana and back, Cross tangles with tigers, a subculture of ritualistic poseurs and, of course, the Mastermind. In Violets Are Blue, Cross continues his deadly cat-and-mouse game with the Mastermind while also investigating a bizarre, vampiric murder spree. At the conclusion of Roses Are Red (2000), Cross, a lonely man but devoted father, loses his new romantic and professional partner when she’s brutally killed by his nemesis, the Mastermind. This is Patterson’s seventh crime thriller to feature fortysomething psychologist turned homicide detective Alex Cross. Vampires, magicians, murder, and mayhem fill the pages of James Patterson’s 2001 novel, Violets Are Blue. ![]()
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