Taken

At the start of bestseller Crais’s satisfying 15th Elvis Cole novel (after 2011’s The Sentry), Jack Berman, a USC dropout, and his girlfriend, Krista Morales, a star student at Loyola Marymount, get caught in a battle between human traffickers and “bajadores”—predators who prey on other criminals—while visiting the site of an old desert plane crash near Rancho Mirage, Calif. Krista’s mother, who’s seen a flattering magazine story about Cole, hires Cole to find her daughter, who she suspects is pretending to be kidnapped as part of a scheme Jack cooked up to extort money so they can get married. While the tension level isn’t up to Crais’s usual standard, Cole and sidekicks Joe Pike and Jon Stone all get a chance to shine as Cole plays a dangerous game that makes him a prisoner of the deadly bajadore known as the Syrian. Told from multiple points of view, this installment would make a fine action-packed film with three strong male leads. Author tour. Agent: Aaron Priest, Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. (Jan.)