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The Abduction

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The Abduction is the heart-pounding, adrenaline-fuelled follow up to Jonathan Holt’s highly acclaimed international thriller The Abomination—a modern tale of mystery, treachery, and intrigue that moves between the physical and virtual worlds of Venice, Italy, blurring the boundary between dark fantasy and terrifying reality.

An unlikely trio must form an alliance to save a kidnapped young girl and untangle a nefarious plot that reaches back decades.

Second Lieutenant Holly Boland is an intelligence analyst trained to look for clues ordinary investigators miss. When a U.S. army officer’s daughter is kidnapped from an American base in Venice, Holly is sure that the mysterious abductors want more than a ransom.

Venetian police captain Kat Tapo has found a webcam feed embedded in the encrypted website Carnivia.com, a virtual Venice. It streams video of a terrified teenage girl, hooded and tied to a chair. A strand of text scrolls across the screen: “Sensory deprivation is not torture.” Is the girl the missing daughter of the American military officer? Who is behind the cryptic message?

Daniele Barbo, the genius webmaster and creator of Carnivia, has never let the government access his servers, and finding the missing girl is not his problem. But then secrets from Italy’s dark wartime past begin to surface—revelations that could put them all in danger. To save his own skin, Daniel must decide how far he’s willing to let them in.

In a race against time, Holly, Kat, and Daniel must find the shocking truth . . . or watch as more than one innocent life is sacrificed.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 14, 2014
      The disappearance in Venice of 16-year-old Mia Elston, an American officer’s daughter, kick-starts Holt’s enthralling second Carnivia thriller (after 2013’s The Abomination). Videos soon appear on Carnivia.com—a cyber-Venice in which carnival masks hide identities and ethical boundaries collapse—showing Mia undergoing CIA-sanctioned “interrogation” techniques. While the kidnappers claim the “non-torture” will cease when Americans halt construction on a nearby military base, Carabiniere Capt. Kat Tapo and U.S. Army 2nd Lt. Holly Boland suspect the abductors have powerful, hidden supporters with another agenda. They enlist Daniele Barbo, Carnivia’s reclusive mastermind, to help find Mia. Holt deftly avoids prurience or gratuity while conveying the horror of walling, waterboarding, and similar practices, and Mia is refreshingly resourceful throughout her ordeal. Holt weaves her kidnapping into a larger narrative of American foreign policy during WWII, the Cold War, and post-9/11, raising troubling questions about how the U.S. defines its allies and foes, and how it treats both. Agent: Caradoc King, A.P. Watt (U.K.).

    • Booklist

      June 1, 2014
      This second installment in the Carnivia trilogy (following The Abomination, 2013) returns to Venice, a setting that embodies beauty and decay. Holt also brings back Venetian carabiniere capo Kat Tapo, a woman who likes the dark side of Venice a bit too much for her own safety. The mystery centers on the kidnapping of a young American girl from a sex party during Carnivale. The girl's parents are both attached to the controversial and unpopular new U.S. military base outside Venice. The kidnappers use the Internet to show the parents exactly what kind of tortures their daughter is undergoing (readers may well feel uncomfortable at the graphic details the author presents). At the same time, a skeleton found near the American airfield proves to be that of a famous Italian Resistance officer, and other developments point toward an explosive revelation about the papacy during WWII. Holt gives us excruciating suspense in the kidnapping narrative, suspense that's heightened by also presenting the victim's shifting point of view, from a benign This is a matter of business to unraveled terror.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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