Kiss the Girls

James Patterson's Kiss the Girls brings Washington detective and psychologist Alex Cross to North Carolina after his niece Naomi, a law student, disappears. Her case joins a pattern of missing women around Chapel Hill connected to a captor who calls himself Casanova. Across the country, murders in Los Angeles suggest another offender whose methods may be linked to the same network of violence.

Cross works with local and federal investigators, and survivor Kate McTiernan supplies knowledge the case files cannot provide. The investigation must account for two perpetrators who appear to cooperate, compete, and learn from each other. That structure shifts attention between the search for Naomi, the safety of other captives, and the problem of recognizing patterns across distant jurisdictions.

The novel's central tension comes from turning private loss into disciplined inquiry. Notice how testimony and professional expertise carry different kinds of risk, especially when institutions are slow to connect crimes. This spoiler-light guide identifies the two-region pattern, Casanova, and Kate's importance but avoids the identities behind the masks, the later pursuit, and the outcome for Naomi and the other women.