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Ransom [Hardcover]

Danielle Steel (Author)
2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)

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Book Description

February 24, 2004 Steel, Danielle
A violent crime brings together four lives in Danielle Steel’s sixtieth bestselling novel, the story of a mother’s courage, a family’s terror, and a triumph of human strength and dignity in the face of overwhelming odds.

Outside the gates of a California prison, Peter Morgan is released after four long years and vows to redeem himself in the eyes of the young daughters he left behind. Simultaneously, Carl Waters, a convicted murderer, is set on the path of freedom with him. That night, three hundred miles south in San Francisco, police detective Ted Lee comes home to a silent house; for twenty-nine years, he has been living for his job—and slowly falling out of love with his wife. Across town, in an exclusive Pacific Heights neighborhood, a mother tries to shield her three children from the panic rising within her. Four months after her husband’s death, Fernanda Barnes faces a mountain of debt she cannot repay, a world destroyed, and a marriage lost.

Within weeks, the lives of these four people will collide in ways none of them could have foreseen. For Fernanda, whose life had once been graced by beautiful homes, security, success, and stunning wealth, the death of her brilliant, brooding husband was already too much to bear. She simply couldn’t imagine a greater loss, until a devastating crime rocks her family to its core—and brings Detective Ted Lee into her life.
A man of unshakable integrity, Lee will soon become the one person who tries to save Fernanda’s family from a terrifying fate. Fernanda must draw on a strength she never knew she had. Racing against time in the underbelly of the criminal world, buffeted by the dark side of power, and unmoored by loss and betrayal, no one can predict where this tragedy will take them.

Danielle Steel brilliantly explores the collision of a shocking crime with the ordinary lives of its victims in a novel that mesmerizes from start to finish. Ransom is at once a riveting evocation of life’s inexplicable turns of fate and a testament to the human will to survive.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A reformed drug dealer, a desperate widow, a bigtime crook and a compassionate cop are the players in this perfunctory kidnapping yarn set in San Francisco. Peter Morgan, a privileged young man, lost everything in a personal war with drugs, including his wife and two daughters. When he is released from prison, he is determined to go straight, but hard times force him to seek out Phillip Addison, a business mogul with many shady operations on the side. Addison makes Morgan an offer he can't refuse: either recruit some fellow ex-cons to kidnap the children of recently deceased dot-com multimillionaire Allan Barnes, or his own kids will suffer. Against his will, Morgan hatches a plan. Meanwhile, Allan's widow, Fernanda, is struggling to make ends meet, since unknown to nearly everyone, Allan lost all his money in bad investments before committing suicide. The San Francisco cops, led by Insp. Det. Ted Lee, find files suggesting that Addison is plotting something, but even heavy police protection can't prevent Fernanda's youngest son, Sam, from being snatched. Lee moves into the Barnes mansion to oversee the search for the kidnappers and watch over Fernanda, but in the end Morgan plays the crucial role in saving Sam. The novel begins slowly, with lengthy introductions to all the principal characters, and never picks up speed, with Steel narrating as if from a distance, glossing over critical scenes and skimping on dialogue. Reluctant villain Morgan is a sympathetic bad guy, and Steel engineers the requisite romance between Ted and Fernanda, but this is thin fare.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Four seemingly unconnected people intersect during one completely heinous crime in Steel's latest. Peter and Carl are released from the same California prison on the same day. Morgan is a Harvard MBA convicted of drug dealing; Waters has been in prison for 24 years for murder. The two never spoke, but each knows the other. Morgan has a hard time adjusting to civilian life, and as a last resort seeks out a powerful business associate who sets him on the road to addiction, and back on the criminal path. He recruits Carl and two other men to pull off the allegedly lucrative kidnapping of Fernanda Barnes and her children. Her husband recently died, and she should be worth half a billion, but her husband actually left her broke. San Francisco detective Ted Lee is the man who pieces together the crime and tries to protect the family while hiding his interest in the noble Fernanda, to whom is he is attracted. Morgan is also attracted to Fernanda, seeing her as the embodiment of the life he could have had. This lackluster suspense novel and its plastic characters will have automatic appeal for Steel fans, but other readers may find it wanting. Patty Engelmann
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Delacorte Press; 1ST edition (February 24, 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385336322
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385336321
  • Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.3 x 9.6 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #812,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Danielle Steel has been hailed as one of the world's most popular authors, with over 590 million copies of her novels sold. Her many international bestsellers include 44 Charles Street, Legacy, Family Ties, Big Girl, Southern Lights, Matters of the Heart, One Day at a Time, and other highly acclaimed novels. She is also the author of His Bright Light, the story of her son Nick Traina's life and death.

 

Customer Reviews

30 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (11)
3 star:
 (6)
2 star:
 (4)
1 star:
 (7)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
2.9 out of 5 stars (30 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not her best, March 21, 2004
This review is from: Ransom (Hardcover)
As you're reading Ransom, you do get the feeling that yet again, D. Steel is trying to find some new magic to maintain her readership and capture their interest...give them reason to keep hanging on. Does she succeed? Not quite, but she doesn't fail entirely.

Ransom is one of the first times that I can think of (after reading all 60 of her books) that she attempts a bit more of a calculated and complex storyline- merging 3 into one. She does ok at this, the central story line is about a family who's near poverty after the father lost his millions in the stock market and committed suicide-leaving the mother and her 3 children on their own. And with all of that to handle, the change from living as millionaires to saving every penny and selling off all of their belongings; now they have to handle the threat that someone is out to committ a crime against the family, testing them further.

Of course, like any D. Steel book there's a bit of romance, but actually not too much compared to the suspense that she tries to create. She really does make an effort to make this book different from her others and she half-succeeds. Yes, I enjoyed the stories and the ending. I even liked the characters, but yet again, I just felt like something was missing. This book is not my favorite of hers, not up to par with her previous books Heartbeat, No Greater Love or Jewels. Perhaps in an effort to pump out a large number of books, she's sacraficed quality.

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18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Ugh! Don't bother with this one., March 14, 2004
This review is from: Ransom (Hardcover)
I've read several of Danielle Steel's books over the years. It had gotten to the point where you just knew if you'd read one of her novels, you'd read them all. She rarely varied from her plot and character descriptions. So when I picked up Ransom and read the book cover, I thought she just maybe might have decided it was time to write a mystery or suspense novel. The brief description of the story on the book's cover was indeed enticing and I purchased this latest Steel novel. WOW! What a shocker! IF Danielle Steel wrote this book, then she's forgotten every rule she ever knew about writing. And IF she had this book edited, she should fire her editor. The story could have been a good one if the writing itself hadn't been so poorly done. I read "couldn't even" or "didn't even" so many times I couldn't believe it. And there was so much repetition that I kept going to read the entire book just to see how bad it actualy could be. I don't like to give book reviews like this one, but let's face it. Times are hard and money is tight for a lot of people that purchase a good novel for entertainment. And that's what they deserve. So, if I think a book is truly lousy and not worth the dollars, I feel I owe it to other readers to voice my honest opinion. If there was anything I could say to help this one, I would. But I think my review title pretty well says it all. In my opinion, this author needs to retire if this is the best she can do after all these years. It's like she had no pride in her work whatsoever. If she doesn't care, why should I?
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars A bit frustrating ...., June 5, 2004
By 
"shelsgarden" (LA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Ransom (Hardcover)
Ransom is the first Danielle Steel novel I've read in a long time, and though I finished it, I don't think I'll be looking for any more.

The plot itself was great - it is an intrigueing tale with many possibilities and likable characters. But reading it became so tedious... she is so very repititious, and her writing seemed to be geared toward elementary-aged children. I also found myself wondering about her editor, as another reviewer here did. I would find myself frustrated with her never-ending descriptions of the characters' feelings, and then had to hear most of them all over again.

All in all, it was very handy when I was in bed and wanted to get sleepy!

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