Unfortunately this was archived before I got a chance to read and review the book but it sounds fantastic

Well written narrative delving into the details of rescuing children involved in parental abduction. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to get into this story, but once I got to the point where the author detailed a specific rescue I found myself curious and turning pages as fast as I could.

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book to read and review. The opinions expressed here are my own.

The true story of Darren and his life work as and his international hostage rescues. The story go into great detail of the situations face, which also makes the story a little bit long and it took me a while to finish, as I personally I am fan of fast paced books. But it is written well and the stories are intriguing enough that you don't put the book away and follow until the end.
I would give this a 3.5 if I could, but not an option. Thank you for the ARC.

The perils of the hostage rescuer. A true story of Darren Franklin, who specialized in personal protection, hostage rescue, surveillance, counter-terrorism and the training of military and government personnel. Along with his boss Stephen Mastalerz, who is also an expert and trusted friend, they are hired to extract a child from the non-custodial father who refused to return the child to the custodial mother after taking the child to Greece from Australia. Diane hires Darren via a suspicious and quite inept Peter from International child recovery organization after the Greece police fail at extracting the child. Having to rely on untrained or maybe even deceitful people who say they are working with you, puts a strain on everything they do. Even the Greek authorities are not to be trusted. Interesting story that I had to see how it played out. Since it’s a true story it doesn’t have the fast cloak and dagger of a made up story and so it goes slower and has more frustration and unresolved character development. However, it’s definitely a story you will finish just to see if it works or could it be a failure to extract that some cases end up to be. Thank you NetGalley, Darren Franklin, Martin Phillips and the publishers for allowing me to read this ARC. This is my honest opinion.

"The Hostage Rescuer" is a real-life story of Darren Franklin, who helps to rescue abducted children. He gives a very detailed account of this rescue, but I felt that it could have been edited a bit to decrease the length of the book. There were times that the book gets bogged down in all the details, but I'm glad it has a happy ending!

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

I found this to be an excellent story with lots of tension along the way about a hostage kidnap situation that builds during surveillance. The author travels from Australia to the staging site in Greece early with the kidnap victim’s mother Diane, to scope things out and see if things will be possible at all or not. They become friends from the extra time spent together, and it’s difficult not to like her and feel for her difficult position It’s kind of bizarre that there are businesses like these available, but they have been made necessary unfortunately, and do have a decent rate of success, at least the good ones do.

The story is well written and stays suspenseful as you wait with Darren, the mother Diane, and the two others who show up to help try to get her son Theo back too. It’s right down to the wire as to whether they will have a chance to get him back, or will they be caught by the father’s family, who are all over the place, looking for anything out of the ordinary, to alert everyone to close ranks and get the boy safely inside until the danger passes. A very interesting look at the inside of a hostage rescue case, and many of stresses and concerns on both sides of it that you may not have realized before. Especially in the case of a split family, where the parents have divorced and even possibly remarried others, and one former spouse has failed to return the child after a visit of several weeks in his home country with him. Advanced electronic review copy was provided by NetGalley, authors Darren Franklin & Martin H. Phillips, and publisher Pen & Sword True Crime.