The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A kidnap yarn made for big screen
“The Chain” is the sort of relentless action novel that gets movie studios salivating before the final chapter is written. It’s a book born to be a film ( Paramount Pictures acquired the screen rights, according to author Adrian McKinty’s publisher).
Mentioning this is not to throw shade at McKinty, who has worked far too long and hard to be brushed off as an overnight sensation. The Irish-born writer has written 13 previous books, including two crime series and four stand-alone novels. But this high-concept rollercoaster – dubbed “Jaws for parents” – is the one that will have readers talking this summer.
Plot is the driving force in “The Chain,” but the book’s premise is psychologically sound, too. Parents are heroes, McKinty tells us. Also, parents are monsters. They’ll do anything for their own kids, even if it means harming yours.
The set-up that follows is simple, if improbable. A stranger calls and tells you your child has been kidnapped. To get your child back, you must pay a token ransom and abduct someone else’s child. When the parents of the kid you abduct kidnap yet another child, yours goes free.
Are you paying attention? Good. Because if those parents don’t kidnap another child or bungle the abduction or go to the cops, your kid is dead. It’s up to you to make sure The Chain continues. If you try to deviate an emissary from The Chain will find you and deliver a blow.
The Chain comes for Rachel, divorced mom of 13-year-old Kylie, after a bout with breast cancer that has left her emotionally depleted, but resilient. When Kylie is snatched at her bus stop and a voice lays out the rules of The Chain to her mother, Rachel knows she’ll do whatever she must to get her daughter home.
Rachel enlists the help of her exmilitary brother-in-law Pete. They put into motion a plan to save Kylie, but eventually Rachel understands there will be no peace for any of them until she breaks The Chain.
To say that “The Chain” requires a hefty suspension of disbelief is an understatement. And McKinty gets carried away with his prose on occasion. But despite this, he pulls readers into Rachel’s nightmare and gradual change of heart. Once you surrender to it, “The Chain” turns out to be awfully hard to put down.