Dead Line

June 16, 2014
Englishman Daniel Trent, the hero of Ewan’s unexceptional second standalone (after 2012’s Safe House), specializes in the recovery of kidnapping victims. When Trent’s fiancée and business partner, Aimée Paget disappears in France, Trent suspects that his client Jérôme Moreau is responsible. Trent travels to Marseilles to question Moreau, but while he’s tailing his target, armed men in a Land Cruiser force both Trent’s Peugeot and Moreau’s Mercedes off the road and grab Moreau. After the kidnappers speed off, Trent tells Moreau’s “lithe and beautiful” wife, Stephanie, and the suspicious family bodyguard, Alain, both of whom were in the Mercedes, that he was following Moreau to test the adequacy of their security measures. To rescue Aimée, Trent must help secure Moreau’s safe release from the thugs who have seized him. Fans of Ewan’s Good Thief series may find the arrogant Trent a less sympathetic lead than burglar Charlie Howard. Agent: Vivien Green, Sheil Land Associates (U.K.).

August 15, 2014
A savvy security expert tries to deal with a ruthless gang of kidnappers while protecting a deep and damaging secret. Intently watching the activity outside the Marseilles Opera House as the Ballet National performs inside, Daniel Trent witnesses the brutal kidnapping of wealthy Jerome Moreau. When Jerome's bodyguard, Alain, arrives on the scene, Trent steps forward to offer his services. Alain's question is the same as the reader's: What was Trent doing at the crime scene? Trent finesses his answer, but Ewan soon reveals that Trent's beloved fiancee, Aimee, has also been kidnapped, almost certainly by Jerome. When Jerome's distraught trophy wife, Stephanie, gives Trent her approval, he's in. She also requests, over Alain's objections, that Jerome's handsome but dissolute son, Philippe, be brought into this inner circle. As the quartet continues to argue like cats in a bag, Trent struggles to keep control. He meets privately with Luc Girard, the rugged investigator who's been trying to find Aimee for six weeks without success. Aimee appears in short, splintered flashbacks as Trent progressively takes control of the Jerome operation. The seriousness of the kidnappers is established once and for all when Serge, Jerome's chauffeur, turns up dead. Trent lands in the hot seat when Alain, who's been secretly monitoring Girard's movements, asks Trent who Girard is. This character-driven thriller by the author of the breezy Charlie Howard series (The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin, 2013, etc.) maintains a nice sense of pace and tension and has a handful of satisfying twists.

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Starred review from July 1, 2014
Daniel Trent is a negotiator with a specialized skill set who sells an unusual product. Operating with his business partner and fianc'e, Aim'e Paget, out of Marseille, he provides K and R (kidnap and ransom) insurance to some of the continent's wealthiest families, who may become victims of this special branch of Euro crime. When J'rme Moreau is snatched just outside his estate, Trent is on the scenenot just because Moreau is a new client, but also because Trent thinks Moreau may be complicit in Aim'e's disappearance two months earlier. Up against a kidnapping team headed by the ruthless Xavier, Trent's only outside source of help is former cop Luc Girard, who has his own personal reasons for wanting Xavier caught or killed. This adrenaline-fueled, stand-alone thriller is more akin to Ewan's Safe House (2012) than to his Good Thief caper novels, with Daniel Trent a driven protagonist in the Jack Reacher mold. Readers will want to see more of Trent, and this page-turner, full of twists and turns, cries out for a sequel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2014

A specialist in hostage negotiation, Daniel Trent will talk to whoever kidnapped his fiancee. Alas, his chief suspect has also disappeared. Ewan was recently voted one of America's favorite British authors in a Huffington Post poll.

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