Hostage by Robert Crais.
New York: Doubleday, 2001.
$24.95 — 384 pages.

The good: Hostage is the story of Jeff Talley, a former SWAT negotiator now serving as police chief of an affluent town, who is suddenly faced with a hostage takeover that is never quite what it seems. Faced first with three gunmen on a killing spree, Talley soon finds that the father of the family being held inside the house is a Mafia accountant and that the accountant’s clients are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to retrieve the records of their various businesses.

What makes Hostage a particularly exciting thriller are the clashes of various individuals and factions as they vie for the accountant’s records while at the same time trying to free the hostages from the hands of their scruffy captors, one of whom is a homocidal maniac wanted for several other gruesome murders. Then suddenly Talley’s own wife and daughter are also taken hostage, victims of the gangster wanting his accounts returned, and Talley finds himself fighting a war on several fronts.

Robert Crais, the author of Hostage and nine other novels, provides the reader with a surefire way to offset winter’s doldrums.

Lucky Us by Joan Silber.
Algonquin Books, 2001.
$22.95 — 288 pages.

The bad: Billed as “A love story of our time,” Joan Silber’s Lucky Us is the story of young Elisa, who wants to be an artist, and her older lover Gabe, who works in a camera store in Manhattan. Gabe, who spent some time in prison long ago for minor drug trafficking, now reads books and lives a quiet life; Elisa finds herself attracted to his easy ways and gentle manner. They become lovers, live together, and then, after attending a wedding, decide to get married. When they take the health exams required for the wedding license, Elisa discovers that she is HIV-positive.

It was during Gabe’s memories of his days as a dealer and a felon that Lucky Us lost me. Gabe and Elisa suddenly seemed both uninteresting and silly, with Elisa going away and finding another lover, and Gabe ruminating away on life and letters like some guru for noodleheads. Near the end of the book, after a night of grappling that might appall the surgeon general’s office, Elise asks herself, “Are we going to have sex again now?” and we realize that Silber, like Elisa, has mistaken sex for love.

Hometown Legend by Jerry Jenkins.
Time Warner, 2001.
$24.95 — 416 pages.

The ugly: Hometown Legend by Jerry Jenkins of the Left Behind series tells the story of a dying Alabama town, the man who heads a company that is dying as well, and the coach who returns for a last season at the local high school. It’s a tale about second chances and the meaning of faith, both in people and in God, but the plot begins to go as thin as an Alabama snow less than halfway through the book. There are also some appallingly ridiculous moments in this book — the old coach cuts most of the team for not jumping into a fight on the field, the company decides that somehow manufacturing baseball gloves rather than footballs will bring more revenue to the company, and though athletes have come from miles around to play at the school in hopes of winning one available scholarship, the team hasn’t had a winning season in years.

Some of the football scenes are well-done, however, so if you’re looking for some postseason action, you might want to pick up this book at your local library.

A Bar on Every Corner: Sobering Up in a Tempting World by Jack Erdmands. Hazelden, 2001.
$24.95 — 224 pages.

The sober: Jack Erdmands A Bar On Every Corner: Sobering Up in a Tempting World is, as the book’s dedication states, “For the newly sober, for the frightened.” In this sequel to Whiskey’s Children, Erdmann uses the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as the outline for the story of his drinking days and his subsequent struggle for sobriety. He tells us about his slips back into drinking, the encouragement of his sponsor in AA, the way in which sobriety changes an alcoholic’s entire world. Erdmann is particularly good in giving the reader the feeling of displacement, newness, fear, and hope that come in the first weeks of sobriety, the sense of time itself changing as struggling alcoholics try to find ways to fill the hours of their days with something besides the contents of a bottle.

Erdmann’s A Bar On Every Corner should bring hope both to the newly sober and to all of those who want to give up drinking.

(Jeff Minick lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com)