On the night before his thirty-eighth birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car-full of gun-toting thugs. They were looking to use his ATM card, but when they learned his bank balance, the plan changed. They took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, with the idea of going to a bank the next day and withdrawing most of his money. His captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of gangsta philosophy and sought his legal advice before eventually releasing him in a manner which has to be one of the most bizarre occurrences in the history of crime.

Told from Alpert's memory and notes; interviews with NYPD detectives, FBI agents and witnesses; videotaped confessions; and court records, Kidnapped reads like a thriller - but every word is true.