Amazon.com Review
Ransom opens with the story of five men taken hostage in 1995 in Kashmir, the hotly disputed paradise that lies between India and Pakistan. The men--two Britons, an American, a German, and a Norwegian--were tourists hiking their way through the breathtakingly beautiful part of the Himalayan mountains that crosses through Kashmir, when men with weapons appeared and snatched the five hostages from their wives, girlfriends, and fellow tourists. Interweaving the story of the Kashmir abduction with accounts of other kidnappings and interviews with antikidnapping "risk" experts, Ann Hagedorn Auerbach weaves a mesmerizing tale of kidnapping on a massive scale: as many as 20,000 to 30,000 incidents occur annually, she claims, up from about 6,000 per year during the 1980s.
Although most modern kidnappings are motivated by profit, she says, many are baffling and senseless. Auerbach ascribes some of the blame for the rise in kidnappings to the end of the cold war, which brought a substantial number of uneducated but highly trained soldiers into the mercenary pool as demilitarization slashed military budgets worldwide. Ransom also details the countermeasures that have been put into effect to combat the kidnapping problem, from the FBI's own recent internal revolution on the issue to the rise of high-tech "risk consultants," freelancers who provide danger assessments for corporations and individuals and who, if necessary, will fly to the scene of a hostage taking to negotiate with the kidnappers.
As for the five in Kashmir, one is dead: the Norwegian, his body found dismembered barely a month after the group was taken hostage. Of the remaining four, no word of their situation has come since December 1995, when the four men were allowed to record a message for their families. --Tjames Madison
From Publishers Weekly
As the third anniversary of the captivity of Spokane neuropsychologist Donald Hutchings approaches, only one thing is certain: no one, including the FBI, the State Department and Scotland Yard, has any idea how to free him. The plight of Hutchings and the four European trekkers abducted in the Himalayas in July 1995 by a mysterious Islamic militant group is tragically familiar in this "decade of the forgotten hostage," writes former Wall Street Journal reporter Auerbach (The Wild Ride). Americans are particularly at risk, she warns, as kidnappers target even mid-level executives, whose wealthy corporations are noted to cough up big ransoms. The growing number of American "ecotourists" are also easy prey, "innocents abroad" in an enticing but unstable global playground. Auerbach's accomplishment is to show how Hutchings's fearless wife, Jane, has coped, heartbeat by heartbeat, while a "rudderless force" of diplomats have improvised their way through negotiations with unknowable captors. She also succeeds in illuminating the ever-shifting dance between kidnappers and negotiators, revealing how and when ransom demands should be met, how time can be bought, when the media should be informed, when rescues should be attempted. But Auerbach is too ambitious here. Instead of focusing exclusively on the complicated Hutchings case, she recounts what seems to be nearly every reported kidnapping in the world from 1995 to 1997. And she meanders into an overlong analysis of the private kidnap negotiation industry, setting up an expectation that one of these high-priced professionals will secure Hutchings's releaseAa hope that, to date, remains unfounded. Rights (except first serial, British, translation, electronic): the Martell Agency.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
