Kill Zone

Kill Zone introduces Peter Macklin, a Jack Bauer-like hit man for the Detroit Mob who would feature in five of Loren Estleman's books. The story is a thriller involving a terrorist group that takes a Lake Erie tour boat and its 800 passengers hostage in order to secure the release of a handful of prisoners. The police aren't up to the job so the no-nonsense Macklin is brought in by the FBI to sneak aboard the ship and handle it himself. Estleman writes in an entertaining style, and the book's setting in and around Detroit is told with the authority of someone who spent his entire life there.