Your Subtitle text
The Worst Thing
The Worst ThingAfter five tough outings in a row, Gideon Oliver finally gets a break as Aaron turns to something completely different. If you think he made life hard for the illustrious Skeleton Detective, just wait till you meet Bryan Bennett!
Most lives have a defining moment, an episode that shapes and colors, for good or ill, all that follows.
Sometimes it comes early, sometimes relatively late. It can be calamitous or outwardly trivial: a parent's death, an unjust accusation in grade school, a disastrous prom date, a lost love, a failed business.
For Bryan Bennett, it was early and calamitous. The son of a consulting engineer, he was kidnapped in Turkey as a five-year-old and held captive for two months under brutal conditions. This mind-searing experience has left him still coping after 45 years with unpredictable panic attacks and bouts of claustrophobia. At the same time, he has retained a lifelong fascination with the subjects of kidnapping and captivity.
"The Worst Thing is an intriguing novel of suspense as well an evocative portrayal of the inner workings of a mind tormented by terror.” Jonathan Kellerman, NY Times #1 best-selling author of Mystery
"Aaron Elkins delivers a mind-bending, heart-pounding read. Count me as a lifetime member of his fan club. I'm in awe." Ridley Pearson, NY Times best-selling author of In Harm's Way
"(A) taut standalone from Edgar-winner Elkins....Elkins excels at maintaining tension throughout and in making his hero's difficulties accessible." Publishers Weekly
"A well-calculated change of pace for normally laid-back Elkins, with mounting thrills, a heavy emphasis on self-therapy and a nice surprise at the end." Kirkus Reviews
"This is the kind of novel that gives pop-lit a good name. High energy, smart characters, classy writing, suspense, and one whopper of a surprise ending." Booklist
Now in his forties, he is a research fellow at the Odysseus Institute for Crisis Management, where he specializes in issues related to corporate security and extortion--but only from a removed, theoretical point of view; he lectures, he writes policy papers, he does research, he prepares training materials. What he cannot bring himself to do is to participate in actual hostage negotiations, victim-counseling, or anything else that requires dealing directly with kidnappers, hostage-takers, or their victims."Aaron Elkins delivers a mind-bending, heart-pounding read. Count me as a lifetime member of his fan club. I'm in awe." Ridley Pearson, NY Times best-selling author of In Harm's Way
"(A) taut standalone from Edgar-winner Elkins....Elkins excels at maintaining tension throughout and in making his hero's difficulties accessible." Publishers Weekly
"A well-calculated change of pace for normally laid-back Elkins, with mounting thrills, a heavy emphasis on self-therapy and a nice surprise at the end." Kirkus Reviews
"This is the kind of novel that gives pop-lit a good name. High energy, smart characters, classy writing, suspense, and one whopper of a surprise ending." Booklist
He has, in other words, found for himself a niche that lets him continually test and prove himself by treading gingerly around the edges of his deepest terrors but never confronting them directly, always sidestepping them.
Until now he's gotten away with it, but that is about to change. When he is assigned to put on a one-week training program for the executives of Globalseas Fisheries, a multi-national company headquartered in Iceland, the nightmare-foreboding that has dogged him for four decades overtakes him: he himself is kidnapped and—once again—taken hostage.
It is the worst thing that can happen to him, the most terrible fate he can envision. At first he is gripped by a white, choking panic in which coherent thought is impossible, but soon enough he comes to grips with the knowledge that the battle of will and nerve in which he is engaged is in reality with himself, and not with his captors. Whether or not he comes out of his ordeal sane and alive is in his own hands, dependent on his own resources.
Those resources are called into play, and in the novel's climax a strengthened Bryan, plumbing unsuspected reserves of courage and fortitude, turns the tables on his kidnappers.
But for Bryan it's not over till it's over. Later, back home in the United States, when the dust has seemingly settled, a startling new development awaits, throwing an entirely new perspective on what has happened, and on Bryan Bennett himself
Buy Now