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Amazon Review
Robert Crais' Hostage opens with Jeff Talley, the police chief in a small southern California town, still having nightmares about the young hostage who died when he made the wrong call in his previous job as a negotiator for an LAPD SWAT team. Now, three small-time punks go on the run after a grocery store robbery and killing in Talley's town. Soon his deputies have surrounded the house where the inept robbers have taken Walter Smith and his two children hostage. And Talley's back in his worst dream again: until the county sheriff's full-fledged SWAT team arrives and takes over, he has to negotiate for their lives. Crais keeps the point of view moving from Talley to the punks to the hostages as the situation unfolds in the house and on the ground. Then he ratchets up the dramatic tension: there's something in Walter Smith's house that a ruthless mob boss wants, and he'll sacrifice anyone to get it--which puts Talley's own family in danger. The action speeds to its climax with the velocity of a heat-seeking missile, which makes it almost criminal to slow down long enough to savour the great writing: Talley... had stepped into the Zone. It was a place of white noise where emotions reigned and reason was meagre. Anger and rage were non-stop tickets; panic was an express. He had been all day coming to this, and here he was: the SWAT guys used to talk about it. You went to the Zone, you lost your edge. You'd lose your career; you'd get yourself killed, or, worse, somebody else. Crais, author of popular books featuring private eye Elvis Cole (including LA Requiem and Voodoo River), belongs in that tier of writers whose novelistic gifts transcend the thriller category--writers such as Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane and James Lee Burke. Hostage is a breakout. --Jane Adams, Amazon.com
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