Review - 24 Hours by Greg Iles


24 Hours begins with the perfect family. On the perfect night. About to be trapped in the perfect crime.


Will and Karen Jennings are a successful young couple with every reason to celebrate. From modest beginnings they have built the life of their dreams. Will has a thriving medical practice, and stands at the threshold of a great fortune. Karen has designed a magnificent house to shelter them and the five-year-old daughter they love beyond measure. But they are about to be tested in a way they could never imagine.

They have been targeted by John Hickey, a genius who has found the key to one of the oldest crimes in the world - Kidnapping. Hickey has turned the crime inside out, creating an unbreakable knot of technology and terror that no man can unravel. In twenty-four hours of hellish precision, he squeezes a family's pressure points, extracts the ransom, and vanishes into thin air, leaving the hostage alive but the family too shattered even to call the police. Five times he has executed his plan, and not once has he been caught. He is unstoppable. Untouchable.

But this time Hickey wants more than money. This time he is driven by the pain of his own family tragedy, one he lays at the door of Will and Karen Jennings. He means to avenge it in his own terrible way and disappear forever. He has reckoned every factor but one: Will, Karen, and Abby Jennings share a love that only the closest families know, and from that love grows a formidable strength.

Though miles apart, the brilliant physician, the protective mother, and the resourceful child struggle against the clock to thwart the madman who threatens their family, and to reunite at last.

They have twenty-four hours to succeed where others have failed. Twenty-four hours to cut the unbreakable knot. Twenty-four hours to live or die.


My Review - 4 Great to the last drop

For those that voted, I did start reading Good Grief but it was to similar to Comfort and Joy so I put it down and went with this one.

What a fast rush of reading to the heart pounding beat.  For many this will be a one seat read. I really enjoyed this one, a packed action thriller.  The whole time the images were in my mind, a definite movie like book.  I should have known, it is a movie, the title is Trapped, now I must go watch it.  I feel like I may have seen it because the story felt to 'real' to me, deja vu like.

The saying it is to good to be true always rings correct at some point.  Why do criminals never know when to stop, that greed will get them every time.  3 Criminals pull off a great crime but only 1 was in charge, talk about scare tactics to keep loyalty.

I find children in books are always the ones that steal the story.  I loved Abby.  She was so genuine as a 5 year old, her fear, creative thoughts, naivety, that innocence you have to love about children. 

I enjoyed how Greg Iles joined all the stories into crashing climax.  There were definite unbelievable scenes, the kind you love even though you know it is all bull so for me this still gets a high rating, for others that may give them a lower rating. 

Greg Iles is new to me but I look forward to reading many more, any recommendations?  This one was recommended to me during Thrill Week and I used it for my A-Z Mystery Challenge.