The Family Cross

Where did you do most of your reading of this one, and did the pace of the short chapters make you stay up later than you meant to?

Is this your first Alex Cross book or your thirty-sixth? Tell us how you came to him, and whether returning to a familiar detective feels like visiting an old friend.

Alex Cross is a psychologist who reads other people for a living. When the trouble turned toward his own family, what did you feel watching a man who understands everyone struggle to protect the people closest to him?

The Cross household has always been the warm room at the center of these books. Which small domestic moment (a meal, a porch, a conversation at the kitchen table) gave you the most comfort while the rest of the story turned dark?

This series roots itself in a lived-in, neighborhood Washington rather than the monuments. Did that version of D.C. feel like a real hometown to you, and does your own city have that same double life?

Nana Mama has spent the whole series as the family's steady hand. Who is the person in your life who would say the blunt, loving thing to you the way she would, and did you hear their voice while reading?

By this far into a series, we know Alex's family as well as he does. Did knowing them so well make the danger harder to sit with, and were there pages where you had to set the book down for a minute?

Without giving anything away, this book asks what a person owes their family versus what they owe the job. Where did you land on the choices Alex made, and did your feelings about him soften or harden by the last pages?