Taken

A patron at Peninsula raved about Robert Crais, and said this is his latest work. Kirkus is not thrilled: For some reason, the normally reliable Crais (The Sentry, 2011, etc.) doesn't trust his story, loaded with the promise of vigilante heroics and nonstop violence, to deliver the goods. So he jazzes it by pulverizing it into sections that leap back and forth in time and among different points of view (e.g., "ELVIS COLE: four days before he is taken"). The result is to loosen the logical links that connect one set piece to another and recast the whole story as if it were a string of trailers for a dozen hellacious summer movies.