Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

Of course, for most people that other solution would be something like getting a second job to make ends meet or going back to school to pursue a more viable area of study. Not so for friends and recent college grads Pender, Marie, Sawyer, and Mouse.

Fueled by frustration and righteous indignation they instead turn to kidnapping wealthy businessmen, and what starts out as a lark – “Let’s try it. Just to see if we can.” – turns into a lucrative career.

The secret to their success is careful research to vet the targets, detailed planning, no violence, and not getting greedy; they never ask for more than $100k, an amount their targets can easily afford and are more than willing to pay.

Select a target, kidnap, collect a modest ransom, move to a different city, repeat. For two years things run like clockwork, until the day they unknowingly select a target whose wife has connections to the mob. The wife refuses to pay and calls in the hitters, the group’s attempt to return the target goes spectacularly off the rails, and all their efforts to stay low key are blown to hell as both state and federal authorities enter the fray. (more…)

Jason Kolarich was once an up-and-coming young defense attorney at one of Chicago’s highest profile private law firms. Following a case in which his strategy was the key in securing the acquittal of a State Senator from federal murder charges it seemed as if the sky was the limit for his future. Except something went terribly wrong at the end of the trial.

While he was in his office late one winter night waiting for a phone call from an informant, Jason’s wife, tired of waiting for him to come home as promised, packed their infant daughter in the car and headed out for a planned visit to her parents. They never made it. Their car skidded off the icy road along the way, killing both.

Not able to shake the loss – and the thought they’d still be alive if he had been driving – Jason has hit a place in his life where he simply doesn’t care anymore. Not about himself, his business; only his grief matters. He hadn’t taken care of his own and they were dead because of it.

But when he learns that the informant whose call he had been waiting on the night of his family’s deaths was himself killed the same night, Jason is jolted back to life and into action. Believing there’s no way the timing was a coincidence, Jason sets out to learn the true circumstances behind the informant’s death. (more…)