Hostage books take up a tiny speck in the vast universe of books published each year.

The stories themselves may be harrowing, but their half-lives are short, as the news cycle moves on and another terror grips our gaze.

That said, Canadians seem to be punching above our weight, mainly because our hostages are mainly from the media, like Amanda Lindhout, or they’re diplomats, like Robert Fowler,

But maybe it’s also because we’re Canadians; we travel internationally much more than Americans do (63% vs. 40%), and we think our Canadian passport somehow protects us from being scooped up on the street.

Not any more.