Bantam, $6.50, ISBN 0-553-29751-1
Contemporary Romance, 1997 (Reissue)
I love this book. I don’t know what kind of world Sandra Brown was living in when she wrote this book, but in Hawk O’Toole’s Hostage, you can get away with anything if you’re a Native American. If Hawk O’Toole bombs up a bus full of kids, the author will probably rationalize that the kids are actually budding Antichrists out to pee all over an Indian reservation.
The Biggest Tool Bloody Fool named Hawk O’Toole kidnaps our Biggest Fool Dumbest Wretch named Miranda Price and her son. See, Biggest Tool Bloody Fool is mad that his people are forced out of work in a mine, and now, if he kidnaps Biggest Fool Dumbest Wretch and her son, he may get the Dirty Scumbag White Evil Pigs to reopen the mine.
If Biggest Tool Bloody Fool is so great, why don’t he just open a casino or something to give his people jobs? Then again, he is the Biggest Tool.
Biggest Tool Bloody Fool is a tool. This book is basically 198 pages of sexual harassment – “If you want to handle something hard and deadly, Mrs Price, I’ll be glad to direct your hand to something just as steely and fully loaded as the pistol. But you already know how hard it is, don’t you?” – and juvenile misogyny. Apparently Biggest Tool Bloody Fool believes that Biggest Fool Dumbest Wretch is a slut just like the papers make her out to be after her divorce to Evil Husband, and calls her Randy and molests her at every opportunity. At the same time, Dumbest Wretch swoons because his kiss is like, wow, so sexy.
And best of all, the author has the nerve to scold everybody for thinking the worst of Poor, Exploited Native Americans. I mean, when White Bastards call Hawk and his men “drunk Indians” after seeing the Indians in question acting drunk and stupid, I’m supposed to recoil in disgust at White Man’s Prejudices and Bigotry. I mean, fancy that – calling drunk and obnoxious Indians “drunk Indians”. How insulting!
And oh yes, Hawk O’Toole – poster boy for the noble, sympathetic Indian hero. Utterer of gems like “I’m heavy with lust for you, Mrs. Price. Should we smear the shirt with a specimen of another kind? One they don’t need a microscope to identify” and “A child loves his mother because she feeds him. From her breasts first, then from her hand. When he doesn’t need her to feed him anymore, he stops loving her” – oh yes, our Noble Indian hero alright.
Hawk O’Toole’s Hostage – Bloody Fool, Biggest Tool, Dumbest Screwdriver, and all-round One Ugly Mother of a Stupid, Stupid, STUPID book.
