Jeff Abbott, The Last Minute (2011)
"The Last Minute" was written by the bestselling thriller author Jeff Abbott. At the beginning of the book you get kind of thrown into the story, observing the main character Sam Capra missing his son and his wife. Bit by bit you begin to understand the situation. Sam's wife has been kidnapped by a criminal organization which is called Novem Soles when she was 7 months pregnant. The reason for kidnapping Lucy Capra was to take revenge on the CIA officer Sam because he was about to send all the 9 members of Novem Soles (in English Nine Suns) to prison.
His son Daniel Capra is one year old when Sam gets a call by the criminals which tell him how to get his son back. Furthermore, they explain Sam that he won't have a chance to ever see his wife again because they shot her and she's in a coma now. Sam will have to kill a man who is called Jack Ming, if he wants to see his son for the first time of his life. Jack Ming is a professional computer hacker, who found out important information about the members of Nine Suns, that's why the criminals want him to be killed by Sam. But Sam doesn't have to act alone, he has got a partner named Linda Partridge, whose child has also been kidnapped. The most difficult thing about killing Jack Ming is to track him down because he has a faked identity and they have no idea where he is at the moment. Nine Suns makes it even harder for Linda and Sam to ever see their children again because they tell them to kill Jack within two days. At that point of the book an amazing and breathtaking search starts, where Linda and Sam risk their lives. They track Jack all across the country in a dangerous, desperate race against time.
I adore Jeff Abbott's style of writing which is actually quite simple, but at the same time incredibly fascinating. What I liked most about the book is that one never knows how the story ends. At every point one thinks the end is foreseeable, there happens something you would have never thought of. I think that's what makes the thriller so special and what distinguishes this book from other ones I've read before. The message of the book is that there'll always be a chance to achieve an aim if you never give up believing. All in all I would highly recommend "The Last Minute" to everyone who likes such kinds of books.