Customer Reviews

Falling Off Air

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Smart, engaging story. Robin Ballantyne is a realistic-sounding single mother whose life starts to unravel when she is suspected of involvement in a neighbor's murder. The story is well-written, the characters believeable, the plot suspenseful. Well worth the time.

First we have our 1st person narrator, and her pre-toddling twins with our intrepid heroine witnessing the falling death of a neighbor , who we learn is a big time social activist, on a dark and stormy night. Murder,suicide, chance fall? Then the ex -boyfriend lout shows up, along with the police, a frenzied media, many corporate media types who once worked with the mom and her ex-boyfriend. Mix this together with some 1st class,very stylish writing, very unusual family situations, and a gradual semi-frantic pace into some tough English neighborhoods, and you have a sure winner! PS- See how soon you can pick the criminal. No doubt , you'll be very surprised by the finale! My only (tiny) criticism: too many "our eyes locked" phrases thruout. Nonetheless, an outstanding debut!

London based TV news producer Robin Ballantyne takes maternity leave to raise her infant twins Hannah and William while the father of the children Adam Wills flees from the three females in his life. However, Robin quickly realizes how much she misses the news room when she watches her neighbor Labour Party MP and social arbiter to the nation Paula Carmichael fall to her death.

Robin asks Maeve Tandy, Chief of the Current Affairs/Documentary Division for her old job back, but is offered a loser's position as ethics editor. Doing an end around, Robin attends a ritzy awards ceremony attended by broadcasting leaders including that ship deserting rat Adam. He demands visitation rights to see his daughters, but the next day is run over by Robin's BMW. The media goes frenzy with one of their own in the hot seat as they see her vehicle as the weapon, her meeting with the victim as the opportunity and her inheritance of his estate as the motive. No one cares that Adam was filming a documentary about Paula and sharing much more. Robin realizes her peers and the police have convicted her; she must prove otherwise.

This engaging British amateur sleuth tale is kept fresh by the beleaguered heroine who finds her own community ready to devour her as a wounded piranha. Though two lovers and the media feeding turmoil are old hats, having an insider caught in the headlights provides newness as Robin struggles between motherhood, prime suspect, media hanging, and investigator. Fans will appreciate Robin FALLING OFF AIR as she tries to save herself from drowning in the media spotlighted fishbowl.

Harriet Klausner

Not too long ago I reviewed Catherine Sampson's second novel, Out of Mind. Although the critics didn't like it, I did. So much so that I looked up her first novel, Falling Off Air, and anything else I could find by Sampson. Publishers Weekly called Sampson's debut novel, Falling Off Air, "a smooth read...(giving) scant attention to setting and the plot unfolds slowly at first, but about midway through, the pace picks up and the last quarter is a first-rate read." Personally, I found the entire story rather plodding.

In Falling Off Air, Robin watches as one of her neighbors, well-known philanthropist Paula Carmichael, falls to her death at her London home. There is much speculation as to why. It seems that Paula and journalist Adam Wills, father to Robin's two-year-old twins, were filming a documentary about Paula's work. But the film was never completed. Instead, Adam turns up dead, a victim of a hit-and-run.

That's too much coincidence for Robin, so she begins to sleuth around, especially after she is arrested and suspected in Adam's death, since it was her car that killed him.

I agree with Publishers Weekly in that "Ballantyne makes for an unusual sleuth: how many detectives need to first hire a babysitter before going out to save the world?"

I did learn in my investigations, that Sampson has a third novel featuring Robin Ballantyne, but it has yet to find a U.S. publisher. After reading Falling Off Air, I'm not as inclined to the order that third novel as I was after I finished Out of Mind. In all honesty, after reading Falling Off Air, I was tired of reading about raising children, which is the meat of this novel.

Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's comments.

Big shout out for this fantastic thriller - and I want more from Sampson. She's ultra-cool; a brilliant woman for her times, with all the conflicts that go with that: having kids AND needing her career. Great story. Couldn't put it down. The audio is extremely well done.

Absorbing and engaging mystery novel. Yes, it is a bit long on domestic details - Robyn is a stressed-out single mother, we get it - but the plot and characters make up for this. The only let down was the ending, which felt like an abridged version that the author was ordered to write by an editor.

Robin Ballantyne has her hands full these days as this complex novel opens. Her lover abandoned her to raise the twins he fathered and her TV career has been on hold for a year. So too has her entire life as her world has shrunk to her children and their needs. While she loves the twins with very fiber of her being, she is lonely and depressed and struggling hard to cope with day-to-day problems. The fact that her neighbors are fighting one evening outside her small London town house certainly does not help much. Nor does it help when, hours later after she finally got the twins to bed, she happens to see a woman crash to the pavement across the street during a heavy thunderstorm.

Robin summons help, but she knows from the way the woman, who fell at least three stories is splayed out on the street, that she is dead. What she did not realize at the time is that the deceased woman was Paula Carmichael, a very vocal social activist and member of the Labour Party in Parliament. She also does not know why Robin is mentioned in Paula's dairy and why she comments in detail about the twins. Not only does Paula know the names and habits, the passages in the diary suggest Paula was stalking Robin and raise other questions for the police. Questions that Robin is powerless to explain no matter how many times or in what form, D. C. I. Finney asks them.

Robin also does not understand why, since she was so very good at her job of producing television documentaries before going out on maternity leave, she can't have her old job back. Instead she is made an offer for an ethics watchdog type position, something she does not want but may have to grudgingly accept to keep food on the table. Her shaky return to work is further complicated by evidence that begins to appear, beyond the dairies, which seems to implicate her in Paula's death. The result is a firestorm of media controversy and other complications, which force an increasingly agitated Robin into actively trying to clear her own name.

This is a well written intense novel that quickly becomes a sheer joy to read. Written in a cozy style with a minimum of violence, descriptive or otherwise, the work proceeds at a fast pace pulling the reader into Robin's chaotic world. The author's unique writing style quickly conjures up the world she has created and the pages flow by all too fast.

Featuring strong fully developed and realistic characters, strong pacing, and a twisting mystery, the focus is on the psychological makeup of individuals we all know regardless of setting. The result is an excellent read and one that should make any list, mystery or not.

This entire review previously appeared online at OnceWritten

Kevin R. Tipple © 2005

A new genre of detective fiction, recently much in evidence. Young, beautiful, brilliant, plucky etc. etc. heroine, solves mystery and gets her man! And is supermom besides, with adorable twins (what else?) one of each, and a de rigeur dysfunctional family, but all cardboard cutouts. On the plus side, I did think she had glimmerings of a good book in there somewhere - I might pick up her 5th or 6th to see if her talent, and she seems to have some, has matured.

What a good debut novel for Catherine Sampson! Our heroine, who narrates the entire story in a pleasant, straightforward prose, is Robin Ballantyne--a single, stay-at-home mom since the birth of her twins one year ago. She longs to return to her BBC documentary-making job; and somewhat strangely, it's a mysterious tragedy literally right outside her window that gives her the impetus to charge ahead with the next stage in her life.

Ms. Sampson is a natural storyteller, and Ms. Ballantyne is a likable protagonist we can root for--beaten down by the world and struggling to stay afloat, she still has an underdog's spunk that makes us root for her as someone close to her is carefully framing her for her ex-lover's murder.

The plot is well structured and has the ring of plausability to it. The hardboiled DCI Finney could come from any number of books in this genre, but it helps Robin to have his common sense off which she can bounce her ideas. In short, the plot, characters, and writing style are very good. I strongly recommend this novel and look forward to Ms. Sampson's next novel.