Hostage: A Novel [Hardcover]

Robert Crais (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 7, 2001

The bestselling author of Demolition Angel and L.A. Requiem returns with his most intense and intricate thriller yet.

As the Los Angeles Times said, Robert Crais is “a crime writer operating at the top of his game.” His complex heroes and heroines, his mastery of noir atmosphere, and his brilliant, taut plots have catapulted him into the front rank of a new breed of thriller writers. Hostage proves his earlier success was no fluke. It’s an unstoppable read.

An ex-con with delusions of grandeur and his tagalong brother unwittingly team up with a psychopath one wrong word away from meltdown. When their late afternoon joyride turns into a random act of violence, they take a family hostage in the affluent bedroom community of Bristo Camino. Enter Chief of Police Jeff Talley, a stressed-out former LAPD SWAT negotiator who is hiding from his past. Plunged back into the high-pressure world that he desperately wants to forget, Talley soon learns that his nightmare has only begun.

The hostages are not who they seem, and the home contains secrets that even L.A.’s most lethal and volatile crime lord, Sonny Benza, fears. As Talley tries to hold himself together and save the people inside, the full weight of Benza’s wrath descends on him, putting the police chief and his own family at risk. Soon, all involved are held hostage by the exigencies of fate and the only one capable of diffusing the standoff is the least stable of them all.

Hostage is a blistering stand-alone thriller with superb characters in crisis, multistranded plotting, and pitch-perfect Southern California sensibility.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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

From 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)Forecast: Crais sells more with each title, and this will prove no exception. A 15-city author tour will enhance his visibility, as will forthcoming film versions of Demolition Angel and of Hostage, which has already been bought for Bruce Willis and MGM; Crais is writing the screenplays for both films.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (August 7, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385495854
• ISBN-13: 978-0385495851
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (158 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457,167 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. He was the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award.

A native of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and four generations of police officers. He purchased a second-hand paperback of Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction.

He journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as scripting numerous series pilots and movies-of-the-week for the major networks.

Feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey's Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.

Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that, in Elvis Cole, he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment upon his life and times. Elvis Cole's readership skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais conceived of and structured his novels. Larger and deeper in scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer, Ross Macdonald, always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base." Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience."

Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel, which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel, Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a world-wide bestseller. The editors of Amazon.com selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year. A film adaptation of Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT negotiator Jeff Talley.

Robert Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife, three cats, and many thousands of books. Additional information can be found at his website, www.robertcrais.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A POWERHOUSE OF ACTION AND EDGE-OF-YOUR-SEAT SUSPENSE!!, August 22, 2001

By 

Wayne C. Rogers (Las Vegas, Nevada United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hostage: A Novel (Hardcover)

When Robert Crais writes a book as good as HOSTAGE, I can almost forgive him for making me and his other fans wait two very long years for the next "Elvis Cole/Joe Pike" novel. Remember, I said almost. HOSTAGE is the story of Jeff Talley (think Bruce Willis!), a former LAPD SWAT negotiator who quit his job and left his family due to serious stress, burnout, and guilt over a hostage negotiation that turned bad. He's now the Chief of Police of Bristo Camino, a small California community where life is simpler and the job less demanding. At least it is, until two young hoods and a deadly psychopath rob a minimart and kill its owner. In a futile attempt to escape the police, the three criminals jump the wall of a housing development and invade the home of Walter Smith, taking him and his two children hostage. Talley and his people, along with the help of the California Highway Patrol, surround the house; and, for the most part, things run smoothly. Talley uses his skills as a former hostage negotiator to keep the criminals inside the house calm, biding his time until the L.A. County Sheriff's SWAT team arrive to take over. When they do and Talley signs off control of the situation, his troubles aren't ending. No way. What he thought was a bad day is going to swiftly turn into a nightmare that will push him right to the edge. You see, Walter Smith isn't an ordinary family man. He's the accountant for the West Coast mob and has two computer disks in his home office, loaded with information that can literally bring the criminal organization down to its knees. Mob honcho, Sonny Benza, has no intention of letting the local police or even the FBI get possession of these incriminating disks. He quickly brings in a team of killers to kidnap Talley's wife and daughter, and then tells our reluctant hero to get those disks one way or another, if he wants to see his family alive again. Talley is caught between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to turn and the odds are stacked heavily against him. He wants to save his family, as well as the hostages inside the house, but he may not be able to do both. It's going to be a hard decision to make, not to mention a long night, but the worse is still yet to come! HOSTAGE is an adrenaline surge that will have the heart pounding and the blood racing, clearly illustrating why Robert Crais is considered the MAN. He's able to create true-to-life characters that breathe with authenticity...characters that could very well be your next-door neighbor or the person you work with. He then puts these normal, everyday people in a "do or die" situation, juices up the stress to the point where a massive stroke is imminent, and waits patiently for the ground to fall out from under them to see what happens. As expected, the quality of Mr. Crais' writing is high and cuts to the very bone with its razor-edge sharpness and terse dialogue. The chapters are brief, tense, and to the point; yet, paced in such a manner that the reader may feel as if he's speeding straight into a head-on collision. This is what action-packed, suspense writing is all about, and this is an author who hits the mark every time out. When a writer like Robert Crais is in top form, nothing else comes even close to the kind rush you get from one of his novels. Buy the book, read it, then prepared for the movie that's in the making, staring Bruce Willis as a cop who's once again in the wrong place at the wrong time.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One complication too many..., March 10, 2002

By 

Shelley Mckibbon (Halifax, NS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hostage: A Novel (Hardcover)

This is, for most of the ride, a darned good thriller. The story begins with an account of an LA hostage negotiator in a situation that will haunt him forever, and it may haunt me for a while, too. Crais doesn't play up the gory aspect, what bothered me was the trip inside the negotiator's mind, figuring out what's going on about two steps behind the character. It was believable and horrifying.

When the story shifts to the here-and-now, we find ourselves in the company of Dennis Rooney..., his younger brother Kevin (probably described by most who know him as "a wimp, but not a bad kid") and Mars, who would be giving Dennis the creeps if Dennis was bright enough to pay attention.

The trio rob a convenience store for no particular reason -- it seems like a good idea to Dennis, Mars doesn't offer any objections, and poor Kevin is in the truck with them and can't talk his brother out of it. You get the distinct impression that this is par for the course for Dennis and Kevin, but Dennis really ought to be thinking harder about Mars's reaction.

Predictably, the crime goes awry. Not "predictably" as in an objection to Crais's writing, but predictably in the sense that you just know any plot with Dennis at the helm is going to go bad, and soon. The three attempt to steal a getaway car and end up holding a family hostage. Talley, the negotiator from the prologue, gets called in to deal with them. Since the events of the prologue, Talley has left the LAPD and his family life is in disarray. Portrait of the Negotiator In Crisis -- and I believed that.

So far, so good. But the family in the house has mob connections, and the mob has reasons to want to control the outcome of this situation -- and at that point I started to get impatient.

I liked Talley, who is a believable character with a believable problem. I liked the kids being held hostage, who can't believe what's happening to them and who react to each other as brothers and sisters might. I even liked poor hapless Kevin, who left the house that afternoon thinking he was going to the movies, and who, because he's a lot brighter than his brother, knows this is going to end badly. I believed Dennis, with his eternal self-justification and efforts to come up with a plan to save himself -- I just didn't believe he was going to succeed. And I was creeped out and interested in Mars. I just didn't have anything left for the mob subplot, in which Talley finds himself negotiating for his own family as well as the one in the house. I didn't care about the mobsters, and I wondered whether there could be another way for Talley to find redemption and put his life back together.

As the story spins itself out, more is learned about Mars, who is decidedly not someone with whom you'd enjoy being trapped in a house. Thomas, the young boy hostage, is seen to be brave and resourceful. Kevin finally gets up the nerve to do the right thing despite the fact he's more scared of his brother (and Mars -- because Kevin is brighter than Dennis) than he is of the cops.

And then Crais just dumps them! Okay, we know what happens to them, and it's spectacular and all, but hey! I was invested in those people! I'd just spent a couple of hundred pages with them, and I didn't want to walk away and forget about them. We eventually get back to the kids, Thomas and his sister Jennifer, but Mars, Dennis, and Kevin vanish from Crais's thoughts, and I wasn't interested enough in the people who replaced them to make up the lack. I wanted SOMEONE to spare them a backward glance. They weren't likable (okay, Kevin was, in a half-starved-pup kind of way) but Crais made me feel for them, even when what I felt was loathing, and I was angry at him for not giving me some sort of coda to acknowledge that they had existed.

The fact that I am still so worked up about this several days later obviously means something. I will certainly read more of Crais's novels, and if this one ends up a movie, as some have suggested, I'll go and see it. But I really would have preferred a story about a straight-up negotiation between Talley and the folks in the house, dealing with the complications inherent in that. Of course, I don't read books about mobsters anyway.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars On the Hot Seat!, August 7, 2001

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 110,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hostage: A Novel (Hardcover)

The less you know about the details of this story before you read it, the more you will enjoy it. My recommendation is that you stop friends from telling you anything specific, and avoid reviews that summarize the book. As a result, I will characterize the book in a very general way so that you can decide if you want to read it or not without revealing much. Please forgive me for this reticence, but I think you will be glad when you are finished with the book.

First, let me provide a word of warning. The book contains references to sadism, torture, and violence against children. If such disturb your days or your sleep, perhaps you should ask a friend who has read the book how upsetting it was before deciding to go forward. I found these elements to advance the story, and not to be overplayed . . . but they are certainly there.

Hostage deals with situations where a criminal has seized someone as a bargaining chip for something they want. Hostage situations usually either lead to lots of people being killed, or everyone getting out alive. The difference is usually related to the skill, talent, and patience of the hostage negotiator.

Hostage's protagonist is the chief of police in a small town north of Los Angeles, Jeff Talley. He had served as such a hostage negotiator during part of a truncated career with the LAPD.

Having had that experience colors your view of the world in many ways. It makes you feel responsible for the hostages, the criminals, and for those who are helping you defuse the situation. That's a lot of responsibility to have on your shoulders. Also, you get used to lengthy delays, suddenly melting down psychotics, and impetuous colleagues. The criminals will make unreasonable and dangerous demands, and you have to decide how to respond with little help. Few would fail to melt under the pressure.

At one level, Hostage can be read as a classic thriller about the ins and outs of hostage situations. Those who enjoy police procedurals and seeing crimes from many perspectives (of police, hostages, and criminals) will feel like they have a front row seat. If that's all there were to the book, I would have praised it and given it a three star rating.

However, the book also operates at other levels. One develops the theme that we are hostages to someone else, whether or not that person is a criminal. Our actions are constrained by that other person, and danger lurks if we stray from the demands of the relationship. I thought this idea was very well developed and interesting. I graded the book up one star for this quality.

Several other themes also affected and impressed me, including how one obtains redemption for the consequences of avoidable mistakes, the importance of getting the facts right before taking action, being careful who you trust, and how to decide what the right thing to do is when confronted with two evils. All of this amounted to more than an additional star.

The only reason that I did not take the book up above five stars is that the character development would have had to be stronger for Hostage to become an outstanding book, rather than an excellent one.

As much as I admire the earlier novels by Mr. Crais, I felt that this one went beyond his earlier work in entering the realm of fine, mainstream novels through the excellent way that he developed the story both from a thematic and plot perspective.

In the plot, take notice that the pieces fit together inside one another . . . almost like nesting Russian dolls. That was a particularly fine device. An especially interesting element is that you will see yourself in the role of many of the characters, trying to decide what to do. It's a great mental and emotional challenge!

Ultimately, any novel lives or dies by whether or not you care about the characters and whether you find yourself inside the story. I was gripped by the third paragraph and the hold on me just got stronger as the pages passed. At one point, I realized that I had forgotten where I was or what time it was. If you are like me, you will remember Hostage for a long time to come.

After you finish Hostage (and I hope you do read it), think about where you are your brother's keeper. What more can you do to help?

Size up the situation, check your facts, be careful who you trust, and . . . take the leap!