Like the game for which it is titled, "Cat and Mouse" will have readers eagerly turning pages to follow the wily twists and turns of Patterson's fast-paced and menacing new novel.

Alex Cross is back, the Washington D.C. detective hero of "Along Came a Spider," as is the nemesis of that tale, Gary Soneji. Patterson probes deep into the psyche of these characters, exposing their emotions with the surgical precision of Soneji's international doppelganger, the terrifying Mr. Smith.

Cross pursues Soneji through a new killing spree in Union Station and Penn Station, knowing of the killer's childhood obsession with a Lionel train set owned by his stepbrother. Across the Atlantic, FBI profiler Thomas Pierce becomes engaged in the pursuit of Mr. Smith.

The parallels between Cross and Pierce are uncanny. Both have lost the woman they loved. Cross lives with his two children, Janna and Damon, and Nana Mama, his grandmother. After years, he is finally opening to a relationship with a new woman, the children's grade school principal, Christine Johnson. Pierce, however, is still grieving the brutal murder of his lost love, Isabella Calais.

Both men draw strength for their profiling pursuits from those relationships, though their motives vary. It would seem fitting that the pair could work together to track down their criminal prey, but when Cross and his family are viciously attacked, it is left to Pierce to take the lead in pursuing Cross' attacker.

The story shows faces in ways least expected. Cross and Pierce both practice the basic truth of good police work: Assume nothing, question everything. Just as Cross and Pierce discover, the definitions of who is cat and who is mouse are not as clear as they'd like to believe. Who is hunter, who is prey? Cross, Sonej . . . Pierce, Mr. Smith . . . author and reader?

Mind games and physical danger, brutality and cunning, the unfolding of good and evil in the ultimate game of challenge -- such is "Cat and Mouse," an enrapturing thriller.

Reviewed by Sandy Huseby.