Thriller

Amy Cornwall arrives home one day to discover her husband and daughter have disappeared from their home. The note left behind indicates they have been kidnapped, and that she can secure their release only if she proceeds to a specific address and liberates another individual being held hostage. A Captain in the U.S. Army who was once involved in a controversial death in Afghanistan, Amy immediately and with dread can't help but connect the kidnapping of her family to those circumstances.

Last summer, on a lark, my library colleagues and I each read a book by Danielle Steel to try to learn why she's so popular. This summer we decided to repeat the experiment with James Patterson, another inexplicably prolific author. We each selected our book more or less blindly, choosing based only on the first sentence, and I ended up with this book. It was okay at best. My experience doesn't seem to have been as onerous as some of my colleagues', but I don't expect to ever willingly seek out another Patterson work. Though it didn't suffer from some of the more egregious sins they reported, such as extra-wide margins, large text and extremely short chapters, the frequency of product placement quickly got old ("She digs out her Galaxy cell phone"), as did the number of unrealistic conversations written solely to provide information to the reader. There were a number of plot points that didn't quite add up, but I couldn't be bothered to think about it too hard. ( )

This was a delightful military spy type thriller. Army Intelligence Officer Amy Cornwall comes home to discover her husband and child have been abducted from her home in Virginia. There’s a burner phone on the table with instructions. She is to go to a prison and free a terrorist. If she tells anyone what she has been ordered to do, they die. Now Amy has to figure out a way to find her husband and daughter before the terrorists’ clock ticks down, while her captive family fights to free themselves. I enjoy this particular Patterson/ghostwriter team for their fast-paced writing and clean style. Some surprising revelations about Amy and her husband Tom Cornwall, and lost of twists and turns. I think Special Investigator Rosario Vasquez was my favorite!

Please excuse typos/name misspellings. Entered on screen reader.
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Great thriller. Would recommend to anyone who wants to keep reading. Not heavy on the mind, but a fast paced and well written story with an easy to follow plot line. ( )

A mediocre effort, where suspension of disbelief is required. Amy Cornwall is a Army intelligence officer facing prosecution for the death of an Afghan prisoner in custody. She goes AWOL for the hearing when her husband Tom (a writer) and their 10 year old daughter Denise are kidnapped. Amy is told she must go to Texas to rescue a hostage to trade for the safe return of her family. Dodging obstacles along the way, including an Army CID sent to bring her in, she manages to rescue an old man from three Mexican cartel enforcers, and has to bring him to Florida for an exchange. Bit by bit Amy pieces together the reasons for her family's involvement, with the final piece of the puzzle mysteriously revealed by the hostage, who says nothing until the final showdown.

Co-author Brendan DuBois' Lewis Cole series is WAY BETTER than this. ( )