Kevin O'Hara

Overall, a disappointment. Padded with an irrelevant introductory tale about the evils of the American death penalty that dominated the first five chapters as well as some lip service to closure with a character from The Firm, the novel eventually moves on to the main plot: a somewhat contrived kidnapping followed by a quasi-legal international effort to round up enough cash to pay off the murderous terrorists responsible The obvious moral dilemma of providing such enormous sums to very bad actors who will use it to slaughter countless in exchange for the life of one privileged Westerner is barely touched upon and only in the epiplogue, where it is dismissed. On a minor note, there were also some time-zone discrepancies that had me acratching my head("Morrocco is four hours ahead of New York" It's actually six.) that should have been picked up by the editor.