蓝色紫罗兰 Violets Are Blue

The book begins where Roses are Red ended, with Dr. Alex Cross at the home of murdered FBI Agent Betsey Cavalierre. Alex is in her room when his cellphone rings. Alex answers and the Mastermind is on the line. He tells Alex that he killed Cavalierre to toy with Alex. He's going to kill his grandmother and his children, and John Sampson, Cross' best friend and partner, who was watching over Nana Mama, Damon and Janelle, cannot stop him.

Alex hangs up and calls Sampson, telling him what happened. Sampson tells Alex that the Mastermind can try but will not succeed. Alex is rushing home when the Mastermind calls him back and tells Cross that his family is safe for the moment. He warns Alex that he's next.

Elsewhere, in San Francisco, California, a man and a woman jog through a Golden Gate Park. As they jog, the woman, Martha Wiatt, hears some kind of growling behind them. As they both run faster, she gains some distance between her and her boyfriend, Davis O'Hara. Then, she hears her boyfriend screaming behind her, and runs for help. She sees a van driving by, flags it down, and two people get out. They tell her that she and her boyfriend were chosen. The last thing she sees before dying are vampires.

Later, Kyle Craig calls Alex about a similarity between two murders in San Francisco and a murder in Washington DC that they’d worked on a few months before. The case involved a runaway girl that was found hung from a light fixture in a hotel room.

The FBI requests that he go to San Francisco to meet Inspector Jamilla Hughes. First, Alex takes Jannie and Ali to school but tells them he'll be back for Damon's choir concert. Kyle Craig calls him to make sure he received the information he had faxed. On the flight, he reviews the details of the murders, which include being hung with the blood drained, and remembers that the little runaway girl in DC had died in exactly the same way.

Jamilla picks Cross up at the airport. She takes him to the morgue to see the bodies. A friend of hers, Dr. Allan Pang (a dental expert)is examining the bites on the victims. After reviewing the bites, he deduces that the man was bitten and mauled by a tiger and the girl was bitten by humans.