Pun Salad

Continuing with my rereading-Crais project. About a dozen novels left to go.

This one is a "standalone", not in his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series. In a similar setup to Crais's previous novel, Demolition Angel, protagonist Jeff Halley is a broken cop, traumatized by his experience as an LAPD hostage negotiator: a young boy was killed, Halley blames himself.

So he's shut down, his wife and teenage daughter have left him, and he's taken a low-pressure job as police chief in a small California city. His situation is far from ideal, but it's tolerable. Until a trio of young men (a violent loser just out of a correctional facility, his wimpy younger brother, and a guy who turns out to be (small spoiler) a dangerous psychopath) decides to rob a convenience store. That goes very bad. The perps, fleeing the cops, take refuge in the Smith residence, occupied by father Walter, teenage daughter Jennifer, young son Thomas.

So Halley once again finds himself trying to save some hostages from violent criminals. But there's another complication: Walter Smith has an unusual job, and his superiors are very much determined that his work product not be revealed to law enforcement. And they're not averse to killing people in their way, or taking hostages themselves.

It's a very good crime/action thriller. (It was made into a Bruce Willis movie back in 2005.) A few too many exclamation points! As an amusing historical note, the MacGuffin here is two Zip disks; they were a thing back in 2001 when the book was written.