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Pop Goes The Weasel

Alex Cross, James Patterson’s veteran detective/psychologist and star of 12 thrillers, faces his most complex and formidable villain yet in Pop Goes the Weasel. Geoffrey Schafer, a seemingly normal diplomat who haunts the streets as “The Weasel”, threatens to destroy all Alex holds dear.
Pop Goes The Weasel is about Washington D.C. homicide detective Alex Cross, who is trying to catch the most explosive and dangerous serial killer he has ever faced.   If there is something to be learned from this book, it is that looks can be deceiving. This is because the vicious Weasel, Geoffrey Shafer, also leads an average life as a British ambassador with a wife and two kids. In Patterson’s classic style Pop Goes The Weasel keeps you on the edge of your seat until you turn the final page through its use of imagery, irony, and foreshadowing.
Imagery is an abundant literary technique in Pop Goes The Weasel.   Throughout the book Patterson describes, in detail, the murders committed by Geoffrey Shafer and findings of detective Alex Cross.   In the book, he says of Shafer,
“Geoffrey Shafer, dashingly outfitted in a single-breasted blue blazer, white shirt, striped tie, and narrow gray trousers from Huntsman & Sons, walked out of his townhouse at seven-thirty in the morning and climbed into a black Jaguar XJ12” (Patterson 3).
With this detailed description of Shafer, the reader can visualize exactly what Shafer looks like. This use of imagery also gives insight into Shafer’s upper echelon economic class. In another instance, Patterson describes Nina Child’s murder scene with grizzly detail.
“The rats had been at her, I could see, but the killer had done much worse damage… It looked to me as if Nina had been eaten to death, with punches and possibly kicks. She might have been struck a hundred times or more…” (44).
These are but a few of the many instances of how Patterson uses imagery to enhance the readers experience in reading the novel.
Irony is used frequently within...