Amazon.com Review
If you're intrigued about what a plane-crash scene looks like, and how investigators go about collecting evidence,
Terminal Event will provide the details. If you like personal stories about believable people thrust into strange and terrifying situations, you'll find that here as well. James Thayer is the kind of writer who catches your attention early and makes you identify with his characters completely.
Joe Durant used to be a top investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. (When a cop remarks to him that he was an NTSB legend, Durant says, "We're all legends. Anybody who can work a crash site automatically becomes a legend. It's a nice benefit of the job.") But the job took its toll, and Joe left the profession to work for Boeing as an engineer. This career shift, however, didn't save his marriage; his wife walked out and Joe was left to raise his 15-year-old daughter on his own. One year after the split, Joe's wife returns for a visit--but tragically the plane she's taking from Sun Valley to Seattle crashes, killing everyone aboard. Filled with grief and guilt, Durant asks for his old job back, specifically to investigate this crash. As the FBI becomes involved, and fingers point at everyone from Idaho militiamen to warring drug dealers, Thayer never lets his careful prose go beyond the bounds of reason. His focus is always on the thoughts and feelings of Joe Durant--a very fallible but also entirely credible hero for this particular time and place.
Other examples of Thayer's art available in paperback: Five Past Midnight and White Star. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
An airplane crashes near Seattle. There are no survivors. Joe Durant, a former National Transportation Safety Board investigator, teams up with his former colleagues to determine whether the crash was caused by a technical malfunction or a terrorist's bomb. But his interest in finding the answer is not entirely professional: his estranged wife, who may have been flying home to rejoin her family, died in the crash. This is a fascinating thriller, superior to Michael Crichton's best-selling air-crash novel
Airframe (1996) and the equal of Ridley Pearson's
Hard Fall (1992). Like Pearson, Thayer approaches the subject from a police-procedural point of view, presenting the crash-investigation process in precise detail. Thayer's technique--plenty of question-and-answer sessions, lots of false leads and frustration--generates tension as effectively as it dispenses information. Fans of Pearson and other procedural masters, including Ed McBain, will relish this genuinely engrossing novel, which contains a twist that few, if any, readers will see coming.
David Pitt
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
