Along Came a Spider

Along Came a Spider is a crime novel by the American writer James Patterson, published in 1993. It is the first of his books about the forensic psychologist Alex Cross.

Cross is a widowed detective with a doctorate and an instinct for the minds of the people he hunts, and the novel gives him two cases at once: a multiple murder in a poor part of the city and the abduction of two children from a private school for the families of Washington's elite. The kidnapper has been working at the school as a popular mathematics teacher, and the investigation turns into a contest of patience between a man who is certain he is cleverer than the officials chasing him and the officials themselves. Cross is paired with Jezzie Flanagan of the Secret Service, and the book follows the searches, the false leads and the interrogations alongside the life of a man raising two children of his own after losing his wife.

The novel introduced a character the author has returned to many times, and it established the short chapters and fast switches that the series is known for.