HOSTAGE TAKER reads as if it was created as the result of a seamless collaboration between Jeffery Deaver and Kenneth Robeson. The Deaver part of the equation would be the setting, the twists and turns of the plot, and the villain. The Robeson part would be the whip-smart FBI agent Eve Rossi, who may well be the FBI’s best hostage negotiator, and her misfit, mismatched but extremely competent members of her team who rub up against each other roughly and uneasily, each bringing a different and interesting skill set to the mix. I was reminded of the classic Doc Savage stories of my youth; I loved HOSTAGE TAKER as much as I loved those pulp tales from long ago.

"Pintoff’s demonstrated ability to balance plot and character while keeping things moving at 100 mph will make any number of subsequent appearances more than welcome."

Author Stefanie Pintoff gets things moving quickly with a deadly hostage situation at the venerable St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Eve is on bereavement leave due to the death of her stepfather, a highly regarded CIA agent. That leave is abruptly terminated when she gets a call from her boss demanding her presence at the hostage scene. The reason is that the unseen, mysterious hostage taker has specifically requested her. He knows things about her that he shouldn’t. Who is he, and why is he doing this? His demand is unequivocal: he wants five specific people brought to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The hostages are in the church, which is wired for explosives, and the doer has already demonstrated that he has the will and ability to start killing people if law enforcement doesn’t do exactly what he demands.

Eve does precisely what her superiors have ordered her not to do, which is to bring together an extremely effective team that she had previously formed but had been ordered disbanded. The team is made up of a group of ex-convicts that include a gifted street athlete, a crooked accountant with a gift for numbers and a lack of social skills, and an Irish rogue with a talent for breaking, entering and hand-to-hand combat. Part of their charm is that they are anything but a well-oiled machine, and given their contempt for authority in general, getting them to work together is a task on the order of herding cats.

As the hostage situation unfolds over a very long day and the body count rises, the motive of the actor isn’t anything near what you think it might be. Pintoff drops all sorts of nuggets of information throughout the story, including some historical points of note about St. Patrick’s Cathedral that will make you want to jump on your conveyance of choice to travel to New York and visit the landmark. Throw in plenty of action, enough twists and turns to keep a corkscrew factory in business, and a set of characters that are both intriguing and entertaining, and you have a book that you’ll want to read in one sitting and enjoy doing so.

My understanding is that HOSTAGE TAKER is the first in a series. I hope so; Eve Rossi and her band of criminals are too good to disappear after just one book. Pintoff’s demonstrated ability to balance plot and character while keeping things moving at 100 mph will make any number of subsequent appearances more than welcome.