Kidnap plots
A prominent figure is kidnapped; ransom demands issued. It’s pure Hollywood. But this week we learned of a plot to kidnap five-year-old Leo Blair, allegedly by former members of Fathers 4 Justice. So what can we learn about the complexities behind this most dramatic of crimes?
Read about what is still the best known case in Patty Hearst: Her Own Story (Avon Books). In this first-hand account of the 1974 kidnap, the granddaughter of the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst explains how she came to sympathise with her far-left captors.
Go to Li Ka-Shing: Hong Kong’s Elusive Billionaire (OUP China), by Anthony Chan, for a case that was just as significant. The tycoon’s son, Victor, was freed after the largest known ransom$1 billion (Hong Kong).
Reflection on kidnapping brings to mind recent crimes in Iraq. In A Mighty Heart: The Daniel Pearl Story (Virago); the journalist’s wife, Mariane, recalls his kidnap and murder by Pakistani radicals. The touch of a literary master is evident in News of a Kidnapping (Penguin), Gabriel García Márquez’s nonfiction study of a kidnap in Bogotá, Colombia.
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But the subtleties are perhaps best understood via fiction. Kidnapped (Penguin), by R. L. Stevenson, is the classic example. Or try Elliot Perlman’s well-crafted Seven Types of Ambiguity (Faber), about a teacher who kidnaps when his protestations of love are ignored.