History of the Marines

The nerve-shattering new thriller from the New York Times- best-selling author of Mortal Fear and The Quiet Game

24 Hours begins with the perfect family. On the perfect night. About to be trapped in the perfect crime.

Will and Karen Jennings are a successful young couple with every reason to celebrate. From modest beginnings they have built the life of their dreams. Will has a thriving medical practice, and stands at the threshold of a great fortune. Karen has designed a magnificent house to shelter them and the five-year-old daughter they love beyond measure. But they are about to be tested in a way they could never imagine.

They have been targeted by John Hickey, a genius who has found the key to one of the oldest crimes in the world - kidnapping. Hickey has turned the crime inside out, creating an unbreakable knot of technology and terror that no one can unravel. In twenty-four hours of hellish precision, he squeezes a family's pressure points, extracts the ransom, and vanishes into thin air, leaving the hostage alive but the family too shattered even to call the police. Five times he has executed his plan, and not once has he been caught. He is unstoppable. Untouchable.

But this time Hickey wants more than money. This time he is driven by the pain of hi own family tragedy, one he lays at the door of Will and Karen Jennings. He means to avenge it in his own terrible way and disappear forever. He has reckoned every factor but one: Will, Karen and Abby share a love that only the closest families know, and from that love grows a formidable strength.

Though miles apart, the brilliant physician, the protective mother, and the resourceful child struggle against the clock to thwart the madman who threatens their family, and to reunite at last.

They have twenty-four hours to succeed where others have failed. Twenty-four hours to cut the unbreakable knot. Twenty-four hours to live or die.

24 Hours .