Greg Iles: 24 Hours

Hodder and Stoughton $34.95

Review: Gilbert Wong*

The kidnapping of a child always seems a particularly terrible crime because if the kidnappers' bluff is called an innocent is murdered.

Greg Iles' ingenious plot pits a yuppie couple, Will and Karen Jennings, against white trash criminal John Hickey.

Hickey and his giant cousin and girlfriend have pulled off what might just be the perfect kidnap.

Without giving details away, the victim's parents have liquid assets, and every incentive to pay the ransom and not call the cops.

The rigid time span in which the crime is carried out is integral to the plot and injects an implacable narrative drive.

This would make for a sharp movie thriller with the right casting, and Iles seems to have written the novel with this in mind.

The characters are little more than cutouts, the plot is all.

When it comes to a thriller, success stands or falls on the ingenuity of the writer and this Iles displays with frightening ease as he puts the reader through a series of unexpected twists.

Any parent reading this will find themselves thinking, "What would I do?"

And that's precisely how he had me hooked. I didn't know.

* Gilbert Wong is the Herald books editor.