BookShared
  • MEMBER AREA    
  • Hostage

    (By Robert Crais)

    Book Cover Watermark PDF Icon Read Ebook
    ×
    Size 24 MB (24,083 KB)
    Format PDF
    Downloaded 626 times
    Last checked 11 Hour ago!
    Author Robert Crais
    “Book Descriptions: Robert Crais is the real thing: a writer who keeps topping himself. Last year, after eight popular books featuring private eye Elvis Cole (including L.A. Requiem and Voodoo River), he produced Demolition Angel, his first standalone suspense novel. Its complex, multidimensional hero was a damaged cop haunted by her past failures. It worked in that book, and it works even better in this one.

    Jeff Talley, the police chief in a small Southern California town, still has 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 smalltime 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 savor the great writing. Take this passage, from a scene when Talley's face-to-face with the man who's holding his own wife and daughter hostage:

    Talley ... had stepped into the Zone. It was a place of white noise where emotions reigned and reason was meager. Anger and rage were nonstop 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 belongs in that tier of writers whose novelistic gifts transcend the thriller category--writers like Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, and James Lee Burke. Hostage is a breakout. --Jane Adams

    Google Drive Logo DRIVE
    Book 1

    The Hard Stuff (Joe the Bouncer #2)

    ★★★★★

    David Gordon

    Book 1

    Clete (Dave Robicheaux, #24)

    ★★★★★

    James Lee Burke

    Book 1

    The Waiting (Renée Ballard, #6; Harry Bosch, #25; Harry Bosch Universe, #39)

    ★★★★★

    Michael Connelly

    Book 1

    Toxic Prey (Lucas Davenport, #34, Letty Davenport, #3)

    ★★★★★

    John Sandford

    Book 1

    Resurrection Walk (The Lincoln Lawyer, #7)

    ★★★★★

    Michael Connelly

    Book 1

    Think Twice (Myron Bolitar, #12)

    ★★★★★

    Harlan Coben

    Book 1

    The Price You Pay (Peter Ash, #8)

    ★★★★★

    Nick Petrie

    Book 1

    Three-Inch Teeth (Joe Pickett #24)

    ★★★★★

    C.J. Box

    Book 1

    In Too Deep (Jack Reacher, #29)

    ★★★★★

    Lee Child

    Book 1

    Dark Angel (Letty Davenport, #2)

    ★★★★★

    John Sandford

    Book 1

    Judgment Prey (Lucas Davenport, #33; Virgil Flowers, #15)

    ★★★★★

    John Sandford

    Book 1

    The Secret (Jack Reacher #28)

    ★★★★★

    Lee Child

    Book 1

    The Edge (The 6:20 Man, #2)

    ★★★★★

    David Baldacci

    Book 1

    Gathering Prey (Lucas Davenport, #25)

    ★★★★★

    John Sandford