Kiss the Girls

Kiss the Girls (1995) is a murder mystery and thriller by American author James Patterson. The novel follows Washington, DC, police detective Alex Cross, who travels to North Carolina to investigate the murders and abductions of women, including his niece. As Cross digs into the case, he confronts themes such as Toxic Masculinity Versus Positive Masculinity, The Resilience of Women, and The Lurid Culture of Trauma in the US.

Kiss the Girls is the second novel in the Alex Cross Series. There are over 30 books about Cross and the crimes he solves. Patterson is a prolific author, and his works earn him around $100 million each year. The Alex Cross Series was also adapted into a TV series and several films. The movie adaptation of Kiss the Girls (1995) stars Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross.

This guide refers to the 2002 Hachette Book Group e-book edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of racism, gender discrimination, sexual violence, rape, child abuse, child death, death by suicide, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, death, physical abuse, emotional abuse, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Alex Cross is a police detective in Washington, DC, in the 1990s. He lives in Southeast DC—a modest neighborhood. After Cross rushes a dying 11-year-old boy to the hospital, he learns that his niece, Naomi Cross, is missing in North Carolina. Naomi, whom Cross helped raise, attends Duke University’s law school. Cross and his partner, John Sampson, travel to North Carolina to investigate the case. The white North Carolina police officers are suspicious of the Black detectives from the East Coast. Nevertheless, Cross uses his connections with the FBI to make himself indispensable to the case.

In North Carolina, several young women have disappeared or been brutally murdered. The culprit goes by Casanova, and he thinks of himself as a liberated man. While other men repress their supposedly natural urges, Casanova cultivates his desire to hunt and prey on extraordinary women. After settling on a target, he stalks them, kidnaps them, and keeps them in an underground space. He refers to the concealed structure as his harem, and it’s where he sexually assaults and tortures the women. If the women don’t resist, he keeps them alive. If they fight back, he kills them.

Casanova’s latest infatuation is Kate McTiernan. She’s a down-to-earth, 31-year-old woman who recently graduated from medical school. She works with terminally ill cancer patients at Duke University Hospital. Her job is grueling, but she loves her life. Casanova breaks into her apartment. She fights him, but he subdues her with powerful drugs and brings her to his underground space. Risking her life, Kate communicates with the women in the other rooms, and she attacks Casanova. She gets out of the underground space, but she doesn’t realize that it’s underground, so she thinks the “house” somehow vanished. Casanova chases her through the woods, so Kate leaps into a stream and survives. Cross befriends her, and they develop a relationship, ultimately partnering together to uncover Casanova.

In Los Angeles, another dandified man, the Gentleman Caller, abducts and kills young women. The Gentleman Caller writes diary entries about his crimes and sends them to a Los Angeles Times reporter, turning the reporter into a “star.” Once the Gentleman Caller realizes the reporter might know his identity, he kills her and lights a fire in her apartment. The FBI recover the reporter’s computer and link the Gentleman Caller to a plastic surgeon, William Rudolph. Cross and Kate fly to Los Angeles and spy on Rudolph. They catch him about to commit a crime, but he escapes.

Cross links Rudolph to Casanova. He thinks they’re “twinning”—that is, their sexual violence bonds them, and they communicate and compete with each other through their crimes. Casanova committed his first murders in 1975, and Rudolph committed his first murders in 1981. Casanova sought out Rudolph at Duke University, and they’ve been “twinning” ever since.

Casanova and Rudolph reunite, but there’s tension. Casanova faults Rudolph for publishing his diaries, and Rudolph scolds Casanova for dwelling on Kate. Kate returns to North Carolina, and Rudolph invades her home. Kate easily subdues him, but Casanova appears and neutralizes her. The story implies that the killers sexually assault her, but she survives by letting them think she’s dead.

With the help of a Civil War scholar, Sampson and Cross learn that the underground space was a part of the Underground Railroad—the network people created to liberate enslaved people. Cross finds Naomi and frees her. There’s a chase and shootout that ends with Rudolph dying and Casanova escaping. Cross saw Casanova go into a “professional shooting crouch,” so he believes Casanova is the North Carolina police detective Davey Sikes.

After following Sikes, Cross realizes Sikes is having an affair, not abducting and murdering women. Casanova is actually Sikes’s partner, Detective Nick Ruskin, who follows Cross and Kate as they relax in a North Carolina resort town. He invades their home, but Kate fights him off, and Cross kills him. Cross returns to Washington, DC, and Kate sticks to her goal of setting up a medical practice in her West Virginia hometown.