Mark Gimenez – The Abduction

Mark Gimenez – The Abduction
I was looking on the shelves of the library for inspiration when I picked up this book – why this book? Maybe part of the blurb on the back “riveting action packed thriller”……”next Grisham”. I had just taken one unfinished book back (after 4 pages, which I had re-read 6 times because it wasn’t holding my attention, I gave up!), so fingers crossed that this one would be ok. This is the first book I have read of this author.
It’s present day America in a small town in Texas and Gracie Brice is playing in a soccer match. Her geek dad, John Brice, is there supporting her. One eye on the match and one ear on his mobile phone and a camcorder in the other hand supposedly to record Gracie’s winning performance. As John Brice clinches his billion dollar deal on his mobile Gracie waves and goes off with her soccer buddies to the snack stand.
Gracie’s mother, Elizabeth Brice, a hot shot attorney, turns up late as usual. John ends his deal clinching call as she approaches.
“Where’s Gracie?”
John indicates the snack bar. But Gracie isn’t there.
Soccer coach ‘Wally’ informs the mother that her brother had come for Gracie to take her to see her mother who’d had a stroke and was in hospital.
“I don’t have a brother! And my mother lives in New York and you just pointed her out to him!”
Gracie has been abducted. The FBI are brought in.
Gracie’s grandfather Ben Brice, an ex-army Colonel, a decorated hero of the Vietnam War, senses that something is wrong and flies down to Texas to his estranged son and family. Ben is an alcoholic, it’s the only way he can erase the memories of the war.
As the FBI and family look at the video tape that Gracie’s dad took, they spot the abductors and SUV van. With PC wizardry they zoom in on the end of a tattoo on one of the abductors arms. Ben recognizes it as the same one he has, an ex- member of the Vipers, a crack squad in Vietnam, who worked under covert orders from the president.
Is this a revenge abduction? Is it for ransom from her now multi-billionaire dad? Is it something to do with a murder case her mother had worked on in the past? Or a sexual predator? Is she alive or dead? One of her soccer boots is found and the outer pair of shorts she was wearing, but still no contact from the abductors.
When they find evidence in a van belonging to an employee of billionaire John’s firm, the case is closed and Gracie is presumed dead. But grandpa Ben believes she is still alive, that the evidence and the accused doesn’t add up.
When a sighting comes in from Idaho of a girl fitting Gracie & her abductors description, the FBI say they followed up the lead but it was a bogus one, that they were just after the $25mill reward put up by the parents.
But grandpa Ben doesn’t believe it and wants to follow up the lead himself, Ben becomes a crusading Rambo and takes to the mountains looking for her along with his son John.
It’s a tangled web of parents not being the real parents and people living a lie.
I found myself, at the beginning, going back a chapter as it jumped without warning to another person/time and place: Ben’s flashbacks to Vietnamese War, John’s flashbacks to his bullied childhood, Elizabeth’s flashbacks to her happy former self.
The abduction happened by page 30. The other 450 pages were leading up to getting her back. Gracie was only 10 but she seemed to be handling the abduction incredibly well
The ending became very predictable and there was never any real reason for the adduction. Also, events fell into place far too unrealistically like when an ex-major is wanted by the FBI for war atrocities, kidnapping and evading justice. The FBI just happens to turn up on the beach at the right time to shoot the major, even though he hadn’t been seen for 2 days.
This made me smile: ‘Juniors mother had died when Junior was only a boy. Jacko had always felt sort of responsible. On the Majors orders he had put a bullet in her brain because she was a security risk…………sort of responsible!!.......
I did enjoy reading the book as it was pacy, explosive at times, a not to be taken serious but thrilling ride . Grandpa Ben is Rambo go get'em boy!
review by showhost