Jeff Talley is a good husband, a terrific father, and a fine frontline negotiator with the LAPD's SWAT unit. But the high-stress, unforgiving job takes a toll on his psyche. After a particularly harrowing assignment, Talley hits bottom. His marriage ends, he resigns from SWAT and takes the chief-of-police job in a sleepy, affluent suburb far from the chaos and crime of Los Angeles.

But Talley's pursuit of peaceful small-town life is about to change when three young men, fleeing the robbery of a minimart, invade a home and take the family hostage. Plunged back in the high-pressure world that he has desperately been trying to put behind him, Talley finds his nightmare has barely begun, because this isn't just any house. Soon all involved are held hostage by the exigencies of fate and the secrets of L.A.'s most lethal crime lord. And the only man capable of diffusing the crisis is the least stable of them all....

"After Chandler we had James M.Cain and after Cain there was Ross MacDonald and Currently we have Robert Crais."

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　－－－Los Angeles Times Books Review

length: (cm)17.4 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)10.6