Journal Entry 1 by luckaye from Logan City, Queensland Australia on Thursday, July 09, 2009

Eight students and two teachers from a school for the deaf are kidnapped on a remote Kansas highway by three murderous escaped convicts. They are held hostage in an abandoned slaughterhouse for 18 hours while the FBI's top negotiator, Arthur Potter, attempts to secure their release. The situation is made more difficult because the leader of the convicts is as brilliant in his way as Potter is in his. Meanwhile, reporters are crawling all over the security zone Potter has established, politicians are preening for the cameras, and rival law enforcement agencies are hatching their own rescue plots. Deaver has taken what could have been a routine plot and created a spine-tingling thriller by his judicious use of time, outstanding characterizations, and a plot twist near the end of the book that is as logical as it is startling. In Arthur Potter, he introduces a sympathetic and human hero, a complex, moralistic man who can only succeed at his craft by befriending the vilest criminals and then betraying them. Deaver has also succeeded in making his deaf characters vivid individuals, without a hint of patronizing.