I just started Jackie Collins' "Deadly Embrace." The heroine's father has disappeared after allegedly killing his estranged wife and her lover, and her boyfriend has also gone missing while on a photography job in Colombia. She visits friends in LA to get away, and a team of Uzi-wielding masked men storm into the restaurant where they're eating and take everyone hostage.
And that's just the first 4 pages.
Edited 9/29 to add: I finished the book. It was completely trashy and I ate it up. All that education, gone to waste.