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Title: King’s Ransom
Series: 87th Precinct
Author: Ed McBain
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Crime Fiction
Pages: 147
Words: 56K
A rich man, who has trampled everyone who ever got in his way, has his chauffeur’s boy kidnapped when the kidnappers confuse the two boys. The ransom is enough that the rich man won’t be able to push through his latest deal and so he doesn’t want to even try to cooperate. It’s not until his wife leaves him with their son that he finally begins cooperating with the police. With a police officer hiding in his car, the rich man drops off a suitcase of fake money and the couple who are holding the boy decide they want no more and release the boy and make their escape to Mexico.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to deal with this when I realized it was going to be about the kidnapping of a young boy. Especially when one of the kidnappers was a violent punk of a man who attacks the wife of his co-kidnapper and attempts to rape her. He doesn’t get that far, but that was his intent and I almost dnf’d the book at that point.
In many ways, this was more about the rich man and his journey of self-discovery that he was a complete bastard than about the kidnapping. The rich man was a real jerk but he was nothing worse than the businessmen of today who sacrifice whole companies and their entire workforce simply to increase a projected profit and feed the greed of the shareholders. It’s sad that the love of money destroys people like this, from the inside out.
On the plus side, we don’t get much about Cotton Hawes, the manwhore. I was quite ok with that. Steve Carella is once again front and center and I like him, as he’s a good cop.
★★★✬☆
From the Publisher & Bookstooge.blog
Synopsis – click to open
The story centers on the moral dilemma faced by a wealthy man when he is forced to choose between using his wealth to fulfill a personal ambition or saving the life of a kidnapped child. Two of the three kidnappers repent and tell the police where the boy is and disappear. The boy is rescued.
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