{"id":1996,"date":"2005-02-25T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-25T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=1996"},"modified":"2010-05-02T08:12:30","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T13:12:30","slug":"1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/02\/25\/1996\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Hostage<\/i> by Robert Crais (2001)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This book<\/a> finally makes good use of the multiple points of view that Crais has been doing for the last couple of novels. This time, though, he goes a little further and adjusts the timeline, so when one point of view leaves off at a climactic moment, another will pick up a couple of minutes earlier and carries the story through the cliffhanger in the preceding section to the next cliffhanger, where the process repeats. For the most part, it works.<\/p>\n

The protagonist, Jeff Talley, burned out as a hostage negotiator in LA and came to a smaller town to hide from the failures in his past and his disintegrating marriage. His undead lifestyle shatters when a couple of young toughs rob a convenience store, kill the clerk, commit a home invasion on their escape, and hold the family hostage after killing a cop. Unfortunately, the house belongs to a mob accountant who has evidence in the house that would put the local don away for life. So Crais ratchets up the tension, with a sort of “Oh, man, what else could possibly go wrong?” suspense that Clancy affords us, and then the story just kinda….disappoints.<\/p>\n

Amid the tension, we get a couple of “Why would they do that?”s and a couple of blindsidings added for the sake of a couple pages of mock tension and an ultimate deus ex mobina<\/i> that left me wondering.<\/p>\n

So it was a good read but a disappointing book. Soon to be a major motion picture!<\/a>, and I look forward to the movie. Not only because Bruce Willis stars, but also because it probably won’t be a lot like the book. It will take a similar premise (I hope) and not end badly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This book finally makes good use of the multiple points of view that Crais has been doing for the last couple of novels. This time, though, he goes a little further and adjusts the timeline, so when one point of view leaves off at a climactic moment, another will pick up a couple of minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6307,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1996\/revisions\/6307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}