Ali Cross greatly admires his famous father and wants to follow in his footsteps and become a detective. To do so, he must overcome three major obstacles: impatience, doubt, and ignorance. He succeeds, and his efforts show he is a worthy candidate to become a great investigator.

His father’s upcoming trial and his best friend’s recent disappearance test Ali’s patience. He bursts out angrily at members of the press who hurl challenging and taunting questions at his father. This makes Detective Cross look bad: If the son is impulsive, then maybe so is the father. Meanwhile, a kid at school, Kahlil Weyland, torments Ali about his dad until the boys get into a fistfight. Ali finds himself suspended and grounded; this interferes with his quest to find Gabe Qualls.

The insults are hard to take, but Ali realizes that a good detective knows how to resist the temptation to react angrily. Briefly a suspect in his neighborhood’s burglaries, Ali must go with his father to police headquarters, where reporters again dog Detective Cross. This time, though, Ali holds his tongue: “I’d learned my lesson the hard way, and I knew these people weren’t asking real questions” (207).