Tangled Web UK Review November 2000
24 Hours by
Greg Iles
hbk out September 00
Published by Hodder & Stoughton
at £17.99
Joe Hickey is a kidnapper, a highly successful kidnapper. His plan (it’s
worked several times before) looks perfect. He targets families where
the parents are temporarily separated, kidnaps their (only) child and
plays all three against each other. He never asks for too much money and
it’s all over in 24 hours. Oh, and “the kid always makes it.”
But every plan has its flaws. Looking back over this headlong
narrative you might think that Joe should have chosen his accomplices,
the mentally defective Huey and Cheryl, the sensuous but vulnerable
ex-hooker, more carefully. But Hickey’s biggest mistake is the family he
selects as his target, headed by the self-made Will Jennings and then
compounding the issue by letting the whole thing get personal.
Right from the start you know you are in the hands of a master. Eight
breathless pages outline the culmination of the previous kidnapping: the
frightened child, the contemptuous and dominating Hickey, the cowed and
disorientated mother.
Doubts set in with the scene setting for the key events of the book.
It’s all just a little too pat: model family (Harrison Ford as Will
Jennings?), perfect child (though diabetic), hints of domestic tension.
Such thoughts are probably forgotten, of course, as events take their
course. The child is kidnapped, the home of wife Karen is invaded, the
husband now at a distant medical convention finally contacted. The
novel unfolds at relentless pace, the narrative enlivened by pithy
description and sharp dialogue. Unconventionally, there is a nod or two
towards the widening disparities between rich and poor, manual and
professional classes in American society. Conventionally, it is the
preconceptions of Joe Hickey that are upset: it is the criminals who
remain the stock characters.
Unconventionally too Karen Jennings proves to be a tough and
resourceful opponent: there is much play with the differing strategies
evolved by man and wife, male and female, to counter the unstoppable
logic of the kidnap plot. Conventionally however, it is ‘Harrison Ford’
who finally triumphs ina climax tailormade for the special effects
wizardry of high concept Hollywood.
Not finally a disappointment however. It is too well constructed, too
much a page-turner for many readers to feel short-changed. But a pity
when it could have been something more.
(
Bob Cornwell
)
