Author: Aaron Elkins

Title: The Worst Thing

Publisher: Berkley

Bryan Bennett designs hostage negotiation programs for large companies whose executives and employees are at risk of being kidnapped and held for ransom and demands.

He is passionate about his job and makes sure that when he is in the middle of a hostage negotiation that the police know that his first priority is the safe return of the hostages, recovering the ransom money is second and bringing the kidnappers to justice is third.

The reason Bennett feels so strongly about these priorities is that when he was five years old he was kidnapped in a foreign country and used as 5 million dollar collateral against the company his father worked for. He was beaten, caged like an animal in a six-by-six-foot, unheated cell, and even lost a toe during the ordeal that lasted 58 days. He knows first what is like to be a hostage, though this is something in his past that very few people know about.

Bennett believes that each person's life has a defining moment or episode that shapes and colors the rest of that person's existence. It could be a good event, which would lend sunshine to a person's outlook; or it could be a tragedy, which would always cloud that person's disposition.  Of course young Bennett's two months of captivity did more than just give him bad memories.

He suffers from panic attacks, usually late at night when he is asleep, waking up with the irrational fear of being kidnapped again. He has no way of dealing with the panic other than tranquilizers.  So even though he survived the ordeal as a child, he still lives as a victim to the event over 30 years later.

Bennett's wife, Lori, is understanding but is also feeling the loss of having a normal life with her husband. She would like to travel and see the world, but Bryan feels too enclosed in an airplane cabin and refuses to fly. When Bryan's boss invites him to lead a "corporate-level kidnapping and extortion seminar" in Reykjavik, Iceland, he finally gives in. He's been meeting with a new therapist and they've been discussing Flooding therapy, also known as exposure or implosion therapy. In this philosophy a victim faces their terrors head on in the hopes of disarming the ongoing power in their life.

Bennett, with the help of his tranquilizers, boards the plane, excited to see some steps forward in his recovery. He never would have boarded the plane had known that he had just begun facing The Worst Thing.

Author Aaron Elkins is known for being one of the creators of the modern forensic mysteries with his series on the Gideon Oliver, the Skeleton Detective. Although this new book strays away from that specific genre, Elkins craft shines through. This is a fast moving, thrill heavy novel that the reader will find hard to put down.

Some novelists would attempt to fill in more details and supply more background; Elkins just pushes his readers into the story to see where the characters are already swimming. And just as the readers think the tale has finished been told, Elkins pulls off a unique surprise twist for the characters and the readers both.

 *This review first published May 11, 2011