The Negotiator: My Life at the Heart of the Hostage Trade

Looking back over his 20 years as a hostage negotiator, Lopez (a pseudonym) explains that kidnapping is an industry now worth more than $1 billion a year, thanks to “terrorism, recession, the proliferation of cheap weapons and the globalisation of organised crime.” With more than 20,000 kidnappings reported each year around the world, kidnap-and-ransom consultant Lopez has traveled the globe, from the Middle East to Mexico. With a background in psychology, Lopez makes his negotiation services available to governments, private clients, law enforcement agencies, and multinational corporations. He claims he has never lost a hostage, and offers gripping narratives of his adventures (all names and locations are changed to protect people and organizations). Writing with a noir sensibility, he describes desperate characters in tense situations and offers revelatory details on the history, procedures, and psychology of negotiating with hardened criminals. Tracing the history of hostage negotiations back to Attica and Munich, he concludes with an overview of the current kidnapping industry and a warning: “politico-religious kidnappings are volatile and have a greater chance of ending in bloodshed.... If the criminal believes God is on his side, he’s not going to listen to anything I have to say.” Strong suspense and drama permeate these pages of real-life hostage negotiations. (Sept.)