Hostage by Clare Mackintosh – a Review

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Description:
You can save hundreds of lives. Or the one that matters most.

A claustrophobic thriller set over twenty hours on one airplane flight, with the heart-stopping tension of The Last Flight and the wrenching emotional intensity of Room, Hostage takes us on board the inaugural nonstop flight from London to Sydney.

Mina is trying to focus on her job as a flight attendant, not the problems of her five-year-old daughter back home, or the fissures in her marriage. But the plane has barely taken off when Mina receives a chilling note from an anonymous passenger, someone intent on ensuring the plane never reaches its destination. Someone who needs Mina’s assistance and who knows exactly how to make her comply.

It’s twenty hours to landing. A lot can happen in twenty hours.

Review:

Hostage by Clare Macintosh is another one of her fantastic psychological thrillers.  I loved Mackintosh’s previous books, and could not wait to see what she had for us next.   I am happy to say that Hostage is another fabulous intense story, that keeps us totally glued to our seat.  There are two main POV’s in this story (Mina & Adam), with a number of thoughts by various passengers.

Mina, our heroine, is a stewardess on an inaugural 20-hour flight from London to Sydney, Australia. Mina was not scheduled to take this flight, but her marriage is on the rocks, especially when she suspects her husband, Adam was having an affair, and she needed to get away; leaving Adam to take care of their 5-year-old adopted daughter, Sophia.

The plane takes off on schedule, with crew and passengers excited to be on this trip.  In a short time, one of the passengers is dead; was it a heart attack or was it murder?  Mina spots a picture of her daughter in the dead man’s pocket, and she becomes concerned when she also finds an epi pen (daughter uses this) nearby, which has her checking out people on the plane. Shortly, she receives an anonymous note that tells her to do as she is told, or her daughter will die; she must within the hour, open the cockpit to allow someone else to hijack the plane.  Mina must decide to save her daughter, or possibly kill everyone on the plane.  Mina is unable to do her flight duties, as she is in a horrible predicament. What will Mina do?

Adam is home taking care of Sophia, with a babysitter helping him. He is beside himself that Mina thinks he had an affair, when in reality he is being threatened to pay off his enormous gambling debt or get himself killed.   But when the radio starts talking about the flight Mina is on being hijacked, both him and Sophia are worried; until he realizes that he has now become hostage too; the babysitter gives them something to knock them out, and is locked in the basement, with handcuffs on him.

What follows is an exciting and intense edge of your seat thriller, that was totally addictive with constant twists, suspense and action.  The 350 passengers and crew are facing terrifying danger, with struggles, injuries and death.  The first part of the book gives us a chance to meet the crew, passengers, and some pov thoughts from various passengers, who we try to see if they are part of the takeover; the tense action escalates in the second part.  I thought the reason for the hijacking was a bit different; climate change that is needed to do something about the world on the brink of disaster.

Hostage was a dark chilling scary thriller, that was exciting, with lots of tension, and some twists. To say too much more would ruin the book for you; as you need to read this from to start to finish. I will add there was a twist at the very end, that had me not crazy about, though I suspected about the person.  If you love psychological thrillers, you can never go wrong reading Clare Mackintosh, who wrote another fantastic story.

Reviewed by Barb

Copy provided by Publisher