sally owen

From the September 2009 Issue ....

THE SIEGE, Stephen White, Dutton. $25.95

This is, hands down, the best thriller of the summer. White writes great stand-alones (he also has a series which I don’t think is quite up to this standard), and he has a terrific talent for grabbing the reader by the throat and not letting go. It is a lovely weekend in New Haven, but some of Yale’s students seem to have disappeared. The fact that some of them have influential parents – the sons of both the secretary of the army and the newest Supreme Court justice are missing – becomes a cause for concern to both the CIA and the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. Turns out the missing students are in the Book & Snake Tomb. Is this something to do with the university’s secret societies, or something else altogether? When a student emerges from the Tomb and informs the waiting crowd that he is going to die, and then does, it becomes obvious it is something else. Finding out what that something else is will keep you on tenterhooks.

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