Reemtsma, as the inheritor of a large tobacco fortune, was stopped outside his Hamburg house in March 1996, beaten, abducted and imprisoned in a small cellar. After much tortuous negotiation he was released on the payment of a big ransom, and reunited with his wife and son when he stumbled into a nearby house and phoned them. The police came too, of course, but the kidnappers still went free in spite of his determination to bring them to justice. Reemtsma, it seems, is a recognised intellectual in his own right and a patron of scholarship, so these qualities show up in his day-by-day account of his captivity and considerable ordeal. Though relatively short, the book is concentrated and absorbing.