24 Hours

24 Hours Review

Some writers, like Robert Ludlum, can blow you away with the sheer force of their narrative powers, and Iles is in that category. This story has some cliched elements (damsel in distress, captured child, gentle giant), but Iles puts it all together and makes it work. It's like the Saturday afternoon matinees I remember as a kid--you pretty much know how it's going to turn out, but you still root for the heroes, curse the villains, and cheer at the end. This is the perfect book for a rainy summer day in a cabin in the woods. Chills and thrills guaranteed.

24 Hours Overview

24 Hours begins with the perfect family. On the perfect day. About to become trapped in the perfect crime. Will Jennings is a successful young doctor in Jackson, Mississippi, with his whole life ahead of him. He has a thriving practice, a beautiful wife, and a young daughter he loves beyond measure. But Will and his family are being watched by a con man and psychopath. A man who has crafted the unbeatable crime. A man who has never been caught, and whose victims have never talked to the police. A man whose life's work strikes at the heart of every family's nightmare: the unstoppable kidnapping.

But this man has never met Will and Karen Jennings.

"Iles tells a riveting tale . . .Here is a major talent strutting his considerable stuff." - Denver Post

24 Hours Specifications

This explosive suspense thriller gets off to a blistering start: the kidnapping of a little boy--in eight breathless pages--that culminates with the child's safe return and the disappearance of the successful kidnappers. That sets the stage for the book's centerpiece, the abduction of little Abby Jennings, daughter of Will, a successful physician, and Karen, a slightly dissatisfied suburban woman who's wondering where the passion in her marriage went. The criminals' modus operandi is established early on. They target the progeny of Mississippi doctors, demand a reasonable (to an affluent M.D.) ransom, release the child after it's paid, and promise the victim parents that if they ever breathe a word of the incident to anyone, their kids will be taken again and killed. The kidnappings are carefully set up, targeted to take place when one parent is out of town at a medical meeting or convention, thus ensuring the cooperation of the other. And the victim is held by a sweet, slightly retarded but humongous and powerful man whose loyalty to his cousin, the mastermind, is unquestioned.

24 Hours is a version of the locked room school of kidnap mysteries and a very good one indeed, especially when Will turns the tables on the kidnapper and takes control of the situation. Abby's diabetic condition (she needs lifesaving injections on a regular basis) notches the suspense up one last turn. It's a well worked-out plot, the pacing is terrific, and the characters likable and attractive. Iles is a master storyteller, and this one has big screen written all over it--with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer as the Jennings, if we're lucky. --Jane Adams

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*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Nov 02, 2010 05:01:05