Standoff - Sandra Brown

Sandra Brown has talent. She can craft a legal thriller with a strong romantic subplot that remains central to the overall story without crossing into the forefront. Standoff, however, was a little different. The entire novel read more like something from the teen genre than a true legal thriller.

Reporter Tiel McCoy ends up a hostage in a small town convenience store robbery. The perpetrators are a runaway, pregnant teenage couple. Naturally, the girl goes into labor in the middle of the heist, and the young father finds himself stressed out with events beyond his control. Conveniently, another of the hostages happens to be a former oncologist.

Both local authorities and the FBI become involved in the hostage negotiation and, of course, McCoy's news station maneuvers its way into the exclusive play-by-play. I won't spoil the ending except to say that a second love story develops among the hostages.

Brown writes very well, which happens to be this book's saving grace. The story itself becomes entirely too predictable and unrealistic. This is Brown's first attempt at real time writing, meaning that the entire course of events takes place during the length of time taken to write the book. In this case, that's about 8 to 10 hours, which could account for the lack of depth and development required to make it an absolute page-turner.

I hate to say this about a Sandra Brown novel, but overall, this is another take-it-or-leave-it book.