Hostage is a 2001 thriller novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Robert Crais

Robert Crais

Robert Crais is an American author of detective fiction. Crais began his career writing scripts for television shows such as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, Quincy, Miami Vice and L.A. Law. He lists amongst his literary influences the authors Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest...

, set in Bristo Bay, California, about a small town police chief named Jeff Talley with memories of a failed hostage situation, who must negotiate the same type of situation in his own town if he wants his own family to live. The novel was adapted to film

Hostage (film)

Hostage is a 2005 thriller film with Bruce Willis that was directed by Florent Emilio Siri. The film was based on a novel by Robert Crais, and was adapted for the screen by Doug Richardson....

 in 2005.

Plot

The story begins when three young boys rob a minimart and the salesclerk is killed. Police chase the boys and they end up taking a family hostage. The house taken hostage was owned by Sonny Benza, a man who rules over the West Coast's most powerful Mafia empire. Sonny arranges for his men to kidnap the small town's police chief, Jeff Talley's, family. Talley goes to the location where his family is being held. A man named Marion Clewes executes Benza and his associates for their failure because Marion's employer in New York feels that Benza had betrayed the trust of Marion's employer by failing to retrieve two discs that could shut down Benza's organization

Organization

An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...

and put Benza away for good. The police obtain one of the discs. Rather than killing Talley and his family, Marion lets them live.