Robert Crais, Hostage
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In the early 90s Robert Crais was the new kid on the block. Not any more. He is now one of the most popular and respect American thriller writers. Hostage was made into a Hollywood film with Bruce Willis. This edition contains an appreciation by noted detective writer Michael Connelly.
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Robert Crais is one of the most popular American writers of recent years, a career as a Hollywood-cum-TV screenwriter was followed by a strong private eye series with an unlikely hero in committed detective Elvis Cole. Then followed the stand alone thrillers Demolition Angel (2000) and this excellent thriller Hostage (2001) – as referred to in Barry Forshaw’s Rough Guide to Crime Fiction (2007).
Surprises and tension at every turn in this thriller : one of the robbers turns out to be a serial killer, the homeowner has mob ties, Talley’s wife and child are kidnapped, and no person or thing seems stable. Given the novel’s mounting tension, memorable characters, and skillfully drawn plot, it is no surprise that MGM and Bruce Willis have made a Hollywood blockbuster.
Hostage was published in 2001 in a handsome maroon leather binding with a marbled paper design with maroon spots on a gold background and maroon top edge. Good empathetic appreciation by top mystery writer Michael Connelly. Michael notes that after ten books Robert Crais makes it look easy. That is exactly right. This is the numbered and signed edition of 110 copies.
James Lee Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown
Anthology: Like a Charm (ed. by Karin Slaughter) – 15 signatures
Rating by Gerry on “Goodreads” on May 18, 2012 :
If our count is correct, the Crais booklist stands at about 16 novels – comprised mostly of his popular Elvis Cole / Joe Pike (PI buddies) series. Three of his books are standalone mystery thrillers, including this one, “Hostage”. As the title implies, after a convenience store robbery goes bad and turns into a murder, the three idiot thugs hide in an expensive suburban house, taking the dad and two kids hostage in the process. The plot thickens considerably when it turns out the father is a accountant for the mob, harboring tons of illicit cash and two sets of books that reveal all about the criminals for whom he toils right there in the house.
Enter Jeff Talley, a former SWAT team negotiator with a troubled past who now just wants to be police chief in a quiet little suburb. This case turns out to be a living nightmare to say the least; frankly, much of the suspense in this book follows from his own anguish as the case takes an awful turn when his own family is threatened by mobsters, who of course don’t want their affairs revealed. While the book ends with a somewhat inexplicable set of final killings, the getting there was so filled with tension we could hardly bear to end each reading session. The clever plot thrills for sure, but the alternating narrators of the story – from the cops, to the villains, to the victims – makes for picturing the story for us in graphic detail; at times we’re nearly as scared as they are.
Nowhere near as lighthearted as most of the Cole tales, “Hostage” will chill and thrill right to the very end – well done!
Gerry on Goodreads
Rating by Michael Connelly on May 18, 2012 :
An Extract from the Appreciation by Michael Connelly
“As Jeff Talley tells us in this story, the unknown can kill you. In Talley’s world that refers to the unknown elements of a hostage stand off. In author Robert Crais’ world the adage also holds true. The unknown can certainly kill you at any moment. Storytelling is fraught with unknowns waiting to knock you off the path, waiting to push you into the abyss of implausibility, coincidence, malaise and dishonesty. It’s out there waiting to kill you every minute and every writer knows it. When you write a novel you charge through the killing fields, running a zigzag pattern you hope will navigate you around the pitfalls and unknowns that will bring your story down before you can cross the finish line. The fields are littered with the fallen. It takes a skilled and practiced runner to make it all the way. Robert Crais is that runner and Hostage is that book. In his tenth book Crais brings together everything he knows. A heavily muscled plot that cuts its own zigzag pattern through our hearts and minds. Lean prose used to etch in the characterisations with the finesse of a painter. Combined it becomes a story that won’t leave us alone. That in the end holds us hostage”