The experience of reality TV seems to assert that anybody’s life can be interesting, but In Harm’s Way assuredly dispels that myth. As a soldier for hire, author Corrigan performed a snatch and grab in Lebanon in 2004 to reunite two children with their mother. It was all a success until he and an accomplice were discovered, stopped at the airport and thrown in jail.

It’s definitely a worthy tale, but the first hundred pages contains Corrigan’s guided tour through an uneventful life that has nothing to do with the rescue and indeed proves that while we all have a story, our whole life isn’t it. Instead of relevant backstory, Corrigan seems merely to be assuring us of what a great guy he is when he’s more like a kid who never grew out of playing soldiers.

Maybe the first half seems so interminable because the whole thing is so poorly written. It should be thrilling, but it’s as if the publisher has merely retyped clumsy, hastily scrawled journal entries written with no depth or consideration for a reading audience. It renders the whole book (ironically) surprisingly boring, and a ghost writer or heavier editing would have rendered it much more readable.

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