Hostage

by Suzanne Choney | Sep 10, 2001
Hostage Robert Crais` adrenaline-laced novel opens with L.A. hostage negotiator Jeff Talley juking and weaving, sweating and agonizing and thinking, thinking, thinking, trying to figure out how to talk a man out of killing himself.

Too late, too late he realizes what is really going on inside that house. Frantically, he orders a full-scale SWAT assault - move, move, move! - but he already knows what they`ll find.

Several years later, a brain-fried Talley, separated from his wife, is chief of police in the small town of Bristo Camino, many miles east and a psychic lifetime away from the burned-over territory of Los Angeles. Nothing ever happens here - until three IQ- challenged losers, desperate and on the run, take refuge in a Bristo Camino millionaire`s mansion and hold the family hostage.

Isn`t this where Talley came in? Isn`t this where Talley almost checked out?

If "Hostage" (Doubleday, 373 pages, $24.95) reads almost like a screenplay, complete with the explosive establishing sequence (to run before the credits), that`s because it probably is by now: Bruce Willis and MGM have purchased the rights. All of this would serve more as warning than recommendation were the book not written by Robert Crais.

This is Crais` second novel since he put wisecracking, oddball P.I. Elvis Cole on hiatus. Elvis, easing toward domestication, seemed to be growing tired; he could use the time off. Crais, meanwhile, has been revitalized. "Demolition Angel," published last year, was a smash, a breakthrough novel. "Hostage" could be even bigger.

So here are scraggly redneck Dennis Rooney, his chickenbleep younger brother Kevin and this weird guy Mars, whom Dennis met on the construction site at the job he picked up after doing 30 days for whatever it was this time, on their way to a movie. Dennis declares that they ought to rob a minimart. Kevin gets all squirrelly, but Mars allows that it`s worth a look. One dead minimart owner, one blown transmission and less than an hour later they`ve charged into this rich guy`s house, looking for a car to steal. But the cops get there too fast and now Dennis has to deal with the chief, some hick named Talley.

Except - why is there more than a million in cash stuffed into shoe boxes in this guy`s security room? And what`s he doing with a security room, anyway?

Turns out that the guy is a mob accountant. He was doing the Boys` books, and laundering a few loads of 20s and 100s - no starch, please - when Dennis and crew burst in. The Boys, watching the standoff on TV, know that the info on the number-cruncher`s disks would send them away forever, except that if they blow it, the Big Boys back East will send them Away Forever first.

So they dispatch a team of coldblooded pros. Their goal: Retrieve those disks. Their plan: Get to the chief of police, some hick named Talley.

Crais almost blows his transmission, as this wound-tight thriller nudges the redline from the opening page to its wrung-out coda. Although the characterization of the mob professionals is onionskin thin (the lowlifes are so much more intriguing - as in real life, probably), and the insertion of a serial killer seems gratuitous pandering to the grotesque, and the turncoat was spotted even by the myopic likes of me, Crais keeps all the plates spinning as he leaps from one POV to another to yet another like a methed-up yet still (barely) together film editor.

Likely as not, Willis and MGM will be in the market for one of those guys real soon.

- Arthur Salm

"Next - The Future Just Happened" by Michael Lewis; Norton, 192 pages, $22.95.

Michael Lewis has carved out a niche for himself as a business writer who gets right down to business, employing a wicked wit and eagle eye for the absurd.

He captivated readers with "Liar`s Poker," about the shenanigans of Wall Street amid the stock frenzy of the 1980s. In the `90s, came "The New New Thing," about Jim Clark`s Silicon Valley odyssey of failure and success, the latter including the creation of Netscape, the first popular browser for the World Wide Web.

Now comes the next new, new thing in "Next," a book sure to be more controversial than its predecessors.

That`s because the bulk of it focuses on teen-age boys who are already famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) for their Internet personae, ranging from stock market wiz to legal counsel to music pirate.

And, because the Internet allows us to have such altered identities, Lewis believes that`s what`s next is what`s now, with these cases as examples of the "outsiders" of real society becoming the "insiders" of a virtual one.

Jonathan Lebed of New Jersey made national headlines last fall when, at the age of 15, he became the first minor ever charged with stock market fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Lewis takes us behind the headlines to meet the boy who chose to spend his computer time, not on video games, but rather running down stocks and researching companies. And doing a very fine job of it, too.

Lebed grew up watching CNBC, fascinated by the financial markets. No "Sesame Street" for this kid. He learned his numbers early and well. On his 12th birthday, Lewis tells us, an $8,000 savings bond Lebed`s parents had given him came due. He convinced his father to invest it on his behalf in the stock market.

Within a year, Lebed parlayed that money into $28,000. He started his own Web site, offering stock tips. He also posted messages in online chat rooms, using various fictitious names - a practice, Lewis points out, that is not uncommon, even by adults who trade.

Does that make it right? No. But in Lewis` sympathetic portrait, a teen-ager was penalized, no, excoriated, for being a teen-ager doing what lots of adults do, but doing it better.

By the time the SEC caught on to Lebed, he had made hundreds of thousands of dollars. The SEC announced with much fanfare that they`d settled the case with the teen for $285,000. But what wasn`t widely known was that he was allowed to keep another $550,000.

In another case Lewis writes about, Marcus Arnold was one of the premier legal experts on AskMe.com, and was ranked No. 1 for some time by AskMe.com`s users.

There was only one problem: Marcus was 15, not an attorney (which he never claimed to be) and doling out legal advice daily to those who requested his services (for which he did not charge). He admits to Lewis to never having read law books - "books are boring" - and says his knowledge was largely gleaned from television shows about the law.

When the truth was discovered, Marcus was vilified by real attorneys who volunteer at AskMe.com. But, surprisingly, he was given an enormous amount of support from those he had helped.

"Technology had put afterburners on the egalitarian notion that anyone-can-do-anything, by enabling pretty much anyone to try anything - especially in fields in which `expertise` had always been a dubious proposition," Lewis writes.

"Amateur book critics published their reviews on Amazon; amateur filmmakers posted their works directly onto the Internet; amateur journalists scooped the world`s most powerful newspapers.

"None of this is necessarily admirable or good. Lewis` take on the future/present may be cautionary or comforting. The answer, to some degree, depends on your age and/or your sense of the absurd.

(c) Copley News Service

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Author: Suzanne Choney

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