Kidnap for ransom is a lucrative but tricky business. Thousands of people live, travel, and work in areas with significant kidnap risks, yet kidnaps of foreign workers, local VIPs, and travelers are surprisingly uncommon and almost all abductions are peacefully resolved-often for amazingly low ransoms. Actually, the marketplace for hostages is so well ordered the crime is usually insurable. This is a puzzle: ransoming a hostage is the world’s most precarious trade. What would be the ‘correct’ price for your adored one-and is it possible to avoid placing others at risk by spending it? What prevents crooks from maltreating hostages? How do you (properly) pay out a ransom? And why would kidnappers to push out a potential future witness after receiving their money?

Kidnap: Inside the Ransom Business uncovers how a group of insurers in Lloyd’s of London have solved these thorny problems for their customers. Based on interviews with industry insiders (from both sides), aswell as hostage stakeholders, it uncovers an intricate and powerful private governance system ordering transactions between the legal and the criminal economies.