Hostage
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
'Another terrific stand-alone novel . . . Blistering' OBSERVER
Would you sacrifice another family to save your own?
Jeff Talley left his high-stress job as a frontline negotiator with the LAPD's SWAT unit when he failed to prevent a man from killing his family and then himself. Talley takes the chief-of-police job in a sleepy, affluent suburb, but he is soon plunged back into the high-pressure world he left behind when three young men, fleeing a robbery, burst into a home and take the family hostage.
For Talley, the nightmare has barely begun. Because this isn't just any house. It belongs to an accountant who launders money for LA's renegade Mafia family - and they don't want the police involved...
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The title of Crais's fiery third thriller (after L.A. Requiem and Demolition Angel) can refer not just to the two sets of innocents held at gunpoint in the story but to the reader, who will be wired tight to the book. The novel launches with a familiar (as familiar as Demolition Angel) premise: a soul-scarred cop here, former L.A. SWAT hostage negotiator Jeff Talley, now chief of police of smalltown Bristo Bay, Calif. plunges into an assignment that forces him to confront his demons. The devil clawing Talley's brain is the dying gaze of a young hostage he failed to save in L.A. Now three outlaws two lowlife brothers and a homicidal maniac have, after botching a robbery-homicide, taken refuge in a swank house in Bristo Bay. At their mercy are the family's dad, whom they've knocked unconscious, and his teen daughter and preteen son. The whopper of a complication is that the dad serves as bookkeeper for Sonny Benza, West Coast mob kingpin, and Benza will do whatever's necessary to retrieve the incriminatory records secreted in the house before the cops storm the place. The narrative ticks with suspense as Talley negotiates with the three outlaws, and as they and the kids they're holding respond with panic, fear and courage to the escalating tension. It snaps into overdrive as Benza and his goons snatch Talley's wife and daughter, holding them ransom for the records; the flow is marred only by a couple of cheap turns obviously devised for the silver screen. Thriller vets will have seen a lot of this before, but every virtuoso is allowed variations on a theme, and Crais, with his record and with the smart suspense offered here, has proven himself nothing less. (On-sale date: Aug. 7)
