Hostage: London by Geoffrey Household
Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)
Household’s obituary in the NYT (1988) said that he was “one of the British authors who helped to develop the suspense story into an art form.” While his best-known novel was Rogue Male in 1939, his other novels are worth reading too. Hostage: London is a novel about a world-wide terrorist organization with a nuclear bomb. Published in 1977, the thriller doesn’t mention cell phones or data bases. The nuke doesn’t even have an electronic timer. But unlike many novels written in the Cold War 1970s, it stands up surprisingly well. The terrorist mindset is portrayed convincingly as is their thorough tradecraft. Household’s power to make us see physical and political landscape reminds us of Conrad’s The Secret Agent.
