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Night Crossing (Ballantine Reader's Circle)
 
 
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Night Crossing (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Don J. Snyder (Author)
3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)


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Book Description

December 2, 2003 Ballantine Reader's Circle
A novel of political intrigue (the time is 1998) with overtones of a classic Hitchcock thriller; a story of a romantic encounter—of two strangers suddenly invading each other’s lives.

Night Crossing carries us from a quiet Boston suburb to a wild pursuit across the northern counties of Ireland. The man and woman who find themselves bound together are from two different worlds. Nora is an American, married, pregnant, leading the most ordinary middle-class life until, one day, she finds her husband in the arms of another woman—and explodes out of her house, out of Boston, headed for an Irish countryside she long ago fell in love with, intending to walk across the open green fields where she will decide how her life is to proceed. But on the way, waiting in a clinic in Northern Ireland, contemplating an abortion, she hears a woman screaming in the street. A mammoth bomb has exploded.

Immediately, instinctively, Nora comes to the aid of a wounded man, a British soldier. And from that moment everything spirals out of control. Suddenly Nora is on the run, in the middle of someone else’s nightmare—her pursuers are revealed as British Intelligence, and the anonymous wounded Brit as a man with a past, a personality, a direction, an importance, a name—and an adversary—of his own. What follows through eight terrifying days is a chase in the grand manner—his life in her hands, her life upended—culminating in a daring night crossing of the Irish Sea to Scotland and to the moment of truth.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In August of 1998, police in Omagh, a market town in Northern Ireland, received word that a bomb would go off near the courthouse. Saturday shoppers were herded away from the building, whereupon the bomb exploded in the area they had been moved to. An IRA terrorist splinter group comprising diehard nationalists opposed to the Good Friday ceasefire, calling itself the Real IRA, took responsibility for the bombing and the 29 resulting deaths. In his third novel, Snyder (also author of two memoirs, Of Time and Memory and The Cliff Walk) proposes an alternative hypothesis: that the bomb was planted and the false warning was deliberately given by renegade British operatives trying to turn the Irish against the IRA. Into their scheme wanders an American woman, 42-year-old Nora Andrews, who has fled to Ireland after discovering that she is pregnant and that her husband, Steven, is having an affair. When she na?vely lets drop that she saw a British soldier with an infant running away from the bomb site before the blast (thereby indicating that he knew what was going to happen), she sets in motion a manhunt for the soldier, the rescued mother and baby and for Nora herself all are valuable witnesses sought by both the British and the IRA. While on the run, Nora examines her marriage and the person she has become, and discovers new truths about her life. Reminiscent of the work of the late Brian Moore, with the addition of a climactic scene that could have come straight from Junger's The Perfect Storm, this competent albeit derivative and inflammatory thriller delivers some exciting moments as well as insights into the mind of a woman who slowly realizes her own complicity in the wreck of her marriage.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

For more than 20 years, Nora Andrews has lived within a safe suburban cocoon, but now that her children have left the nest, she finds herself facing the harsh reality of a failing marriage and loss of purpose. The pregnancy she hoped would restore both proves just another complication when she finds her husband in the arms of a much younger women. Meanwhile, James Blackburn has served as a British intelligence officer in Northern Ireland for 18 years, dedicating his life to what has come to seem a hopeless cause: bringing peace to that war torn land. Emotionally drained, he has come to believe that something drastic must be done to bring both Protestant and Catholic hardliners to their senses. On August 15, 1998 in Omagh, Northern Ireland, these two disparate lives are brought together amidst the flying debris of a horrific car bomb. Nora, in Ireland to find her bearings, notices James running away from what will soon become the bomb site with a baby in his arms. How did he know? This is a question a lot of people want answered and others want hidden. After innocently telling a priest what she saw, Nora and James find themselves on the run, but in the midst of the nightmare their lives are transformed. Theirs is a gripping, cinematic tale by the author of The Cliff Walk that can well be recommended for the general library audience. David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 2, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0345438043
  • ISBN-13: 978-0345438041
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 9 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,182,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

 

Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.0 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars Mystified, October 16, 2001
This review is from: Night Crossing (Hardcover)
This is the first work I have read by Don J. Snyder. "Night Crossing", has an inviting cover, with an interior that does not match. I understand that the notes inside the jacket are meant to interest a reader enough to proceed with the book, these notes tell the reader more than half the story, and the minority of the tale that remains is of little interest.

The novel begins with a promising look into plans of terrorists that are unusual as well as murderous. The plans are an example of any ends justifying the means. Some may find the plan ultimately acceptable; many readers will find this the most, and only enjoyable part of the book. The story begins with all the elements of a thriller, and then changes directions and locale, in a manner that can only be called jarring.

This may be a case of a male writer attempting to document extremely distressing circumstances for his female character. Some writers can write of either gender with skill, this is not the case with Mr. Snyder, at least in this book. I found the woman's behavior unbelievable when she encounters her first shock. I found the international trip, and descriptions of a visit to a lingerie shop, very funny, and that was absolutely not what the reader should be feeling. The writer then places Nora in a terribly humiliating situation that seemed to be gratuitous.

When Nora makes a decision to flee her home to a country that places a high value on Christian Religion, with the idea of solving a problem she has, any sense of a plot and a reasonable story come to an end. The circumstances she volunteers for, goes along with, or demands to be included in, are not credible. The tale dissolves into a series of events Nora has no ability to deal with, despite the writer forcing her through the tale.

I really did enjoy the start of the book, and had the story retained the elements of its introductory phase, "Night Crossing", could have been a good book. Unfortunately it slips into cliché, and then slides farther into events that require a suspension of disbelief that was beyond me. There were also numerous events that popped up, generally involving water, which read as though dropped into the tale as opposed to supporting it.

His other books may be tremendous, however, "Night Crossing", cannot be one of his better works.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars The kind of book that makes you think about yourself, July 20, 2001
This review is from: Night Crossing (Hardcover)
I have little in common with the main character in this novel, Nora, but I feel connected to her throughout this story. It is not a thriller in the Tom Clancy sense (thank God) but more in a Joan Didion kind of way. The observations made about war in Ireland (the politics of as well as the horror) are moving. The questions Nora asks herself you'll ask yourself as well. I think this book is particularly well written, one of my recent favorites, and I encourage readers to try it. It is a relatively quick read but it stays with the reader... This is the kind of book that you carry with you in your mind for quite some time.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars inner search, February 20, 2006
By 
Reader 61 "Charlie" (Lake Shawnee, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Night Crossing (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)
Although I found it hard to believe that an American woman would get caught up in this terrorist scenario and go through the ordeal that she did, I have read enough thrillers and enough Irish history to make it believable enough. I liked Snyder's style of writing, and the brevity of it made it a faster read and a definite page turner. I especially liked Nora's reflections on life, especially those things that seem to stay with you forever, whereby you can remember every detail of the place, the day, the events. It makes you reflect on your own life and purpose.
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