"A thrilling ride...[Will] keep even the most experienced thriller addicts strapped into their seats for the whole flight."
-People

"Slam-bang special effects...Nance's streamlined narrative offers some nicely nasty twists right up to a startling, and grimly appropriate climax."
-Kirkus Reviews

"You'll not unfasten your seat belt until you get to the last page."
-St. Louis Post-Dispatch -St. Martin's Press

(Review 1 of 3)
Kirkus Reviews
THE LAST HOSTAGE
John J. Nance

Strongly knotted, twisty airline melodrama from Nance (MEDUSA'S CHILD , 1997, etc.), an air safety analyst and retired Air Force pilot who served in Vietnam and Desert Storm, still serves as a Boeing 737 captain for a major airline, and is a licensed attorney. Nance's legal background feeds as strongly into his new plot as does flying. When Captain Ken Wolfe hears that Judge Rudolph Bostich, front-runner for US Attorney General, is aboard, he vomits in the crew's restroom but manages to get control of himself. Once airborne, Ken spots a defective engine, or so he says, and does an emergency landing at an airport where he gets rid of his co-pilot on a false mission, then takes off quickly and announces that the plane has been hijacked. For several chapters, his crew and the reader think that a hijacker has indeed slipped onto the plane. Soon, however, lead flight attendant Annette Baxter discovers that Ken is alone in the locked cockpit and has himself hijacked the plane, planted a radio-controlled bomb in the bay, and is now threatening to kill all 130 passengers unless certain conditions are met. It turns out that Ken's 11-year-old daughter Melinda was murdered by a pedophile two years earlier and the alleged killer, Bradley Lumin, beat the rap because a lie by Connecticut Judge Bostich got the warrant against Lumin dismissed and let him walk-to murder more young girls, Wolfe thinks. When Ken lands to refuel, first-time FBI hostage negotiator Kat Bronsky gets aboard and begins trying to talk him out of his suicidal mission. But Ken is all too familiar with her tactics and can't be swayed: Bostich must confess, or else. Things, of course, are never that simple. Many slam-bang special effects, and the characters are unremarkable, but Nance's streamlined narrative offers some nicely nasty twists right up to a startling, and grimly appropriate, climax.

Back to top of page or click here to return to previous page.

(Review 2 of 3)
Publisher's Weekly
THE LAST HOSTAGE
John J. Nance

Solid aviation expertise and well-plotted twists barely keep this overwrought, made-for-TV tale aloft. Airbridge Airlines pilot Ken Wolfe fakes engine trouble to force a landing; then, having tricked his co-pilot off the plane, he takes off. His plan: to extort a confession from a surprise passenger, U.S. Attorney General nominee Rudolph Bostitch.

It seems that, as a Connecticut DA, Bostitch covered up for the man who Wolfe believes tortured and killed his 11-year-old daughter. Wolfe rolls the plane to convince the crew that a hijacker with a bomb shares the cockpit, a Flitephone call alerts the FBI and novice female negotiator Kat Bronsky is put on the case. Romantic possibilities (and others, almost as improbable) open up when Bronsky is tricked onto the hijacked plane and bonds, just enough, with Wolfe. Good Morning America aviation analyst Nance (MEDUSA'S CHILD) packs the plane with typecast passenger victims: an elderly fear-of-flying group, high-school band, pregnant wife, retired tough cop, plucky crew and shifts his villains on the wing. Despite dialogue that could have been lifted from the Airplane parodies ("Have you ever pasted Annie's face on Melinda's mutilated body? Mentally, I mean"), technicalities of airline flight lend credence to this outrageously melodramatic thriller. (Feb.) FYI: Two of Nance's previous airplane thrillers, PANDORA'S CLOCK and MEDUSA'S CHILD , were made into TV miniseries.

Back to top of page or click here to return to previous page.

(Review 3 of 3)
Barnes and Noble Annotation
THE LAST HOSTAGE
John J. Nance

John J. Nance has very quickly become a household name, with such novels as "PANDORA'S CLOCK " and "MEDUSA'S CHILD." Hitting the bestseller lists, he has honed the art of his fiction down to a near-science.

Despite the fact that "THE LAST HOSTAGE" has striking similarities to his previous novels -- "Hostage" takes place on a plane, and there's a time bomb of sorts ticking on it -- this novel soars on its own merits. Nance does for jets and airplanes what Clancy does for the military and what Stephen King does for small-town Maine: He creates a setting that is absolutely grounded in his expert knowledge of it. I tried to resist the pull of this novel, and I finally surrendered to it. "THE LAST HOSTAGE " proceeds at breakneck pace from page one.
Nance opens with a tense mystery that will play with the reader throughout the story. A mysterious figure aims a Winchester 30.6 at a man named Bradley Lumin in Colorado. When the gunman shoots, Nance cuts to a completely different time and place.

The passenger jet called AirBridge 90 is boarding at Colorado Springs International Airport. Things are going wrong. At first it's a slow trickle, then a downpour of ill omens before the flight takes off. The captain is late, and Annette Baxter, the lead flight attendant, is none too patient. When the copilot, David Gates, tells her that the captain for the day is Ken Wolfe, Annette knows her day has gone to hell. She's been on flights with Captain Wolfe before, and he is no picnic.

There is no love lost between Annette and Wolfe, and when he arrives, his mood is both distant and surly. When AirBridge 90, headed for Phoenix, finally becomes airborne, Wolfe suspects they've lost an engine.
But this will not be so easy. The plane will have to make an emergency landing in Durango to give ground maintenance time to take care of the problem. The passengers onboard grow restless, but soon the jet taxis out to the tarmac for yet another takeoff. As Flight 90 gains altitude, Annette notices that the cockpit door is locked. A young woman panics, claiming her husband left the airplane and never reboarded before takeoff. Annette believes, however, that the woman's husband is in the cockpit with Captain Wolfe.
Meanwhile, back on the ground, both the copilot and the worried woman's husband stare in shock as they watch AirBridge 90 fly off.

As Annette tries to talk to Captain Wolfe via her intercom, he tells her something terrifying: In the cockpit, a terrorist has a gun to the captain's head. In the terrorist's hand is a device that can set off a bomb that has been planted in cargo.

As both the air-traffic controllers on the ground and Annette and the other flight attendants deal with the panic in the air, an expert hostage negotiator is on her way to the crisis.

FBI agent Katherine "Kat" Bronsky arrives to handle both the terrorist's demands and a story even more hair-raising than the immediate threat to the passengers of AirBridge 90. A young girl was kidnapped and murdered a few years previous, and as Kat gets hold of a business jet to race the hostage plane, the dark secrets of the accused killer come to light. Not only is the terrorist on the plane that killer but one of his hostages may just be the next attorney general of the United States.

Nance defines the thriller of twists, turns, mid-air rolls, and dives, and "THE LAST HOSTAGE" does not let up until its breathtaking finale. Though Kat Bronsky is ostensibly the protagonist, the real star of this novel is the milieu of passenger jets and the various threats to those who ride them. Do not pass up the chance to read "THE LAST HOSTAGE." It is wonderful escapism with the taut suspense readers have come to expect from John J. Nance. --Douglas Clegg

Back to top of page or click here to return to previous page.