Terminal Event: A Novel [Mass Market Paperback]

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 the Hardcover edition.

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 the Hardcover edition.

Superbly crafted thriller from the prolific Thayer (Five Past Midnight, 1997, etc.). ``A surgeon doesn't operate on his own family members,'' National Transporation Safety Board site commander Richard Shrader warns former NTSB investigator Joe Durant when Durant demands his old job back. ``Are you going to be able to work on the incident that killed your wife?'' Durant hopes it will be good therapy for him to wander the five-mile trail of wreckage on a lonely mountainside 60 miles east of Seattle, though admittedly he doesn't look forward to finding his estranged wife among the mangled bits of aircraft and flesh. But he has another motive. A somewhat flabby engineer who plays harmonica in a blues band and loses his lunch at the sight of blood, Durant is also hoping to find out why his wife, whod been coming to visit their 15-year-old daughter, Sarah, had left him several months before. After getting a six-month leave of absence from Boeing, hes paired with tough-as-nails FBI ``priest'' Linda Dillon, an unhappily married expert at prying confessions out of hardened criminals. As Thayer piles on fascinating details about crash-scene procedures and computerized duplications of the terrifying last minutes the passengers endured, he tweaks the thriller formula by giving Durant the coolest head: while Durant suspects that faulty wiring near a fuel tank produced a spark that blew up the plane, the FBI pounces on an anonymous bomber's threatening letter and goes on a multi-state manhunt for crazed Idaho militia renegades, Arab terrorists, and even a drug dealer using the plane to transport a stash of cashred herrings all. Lucid prose and expert pacing keep the excitement high, even if the low-key climax, following so much intricately described detective work, comes off forced. A smoothly entertaining return to form after Thayer's excellent historical pastiche, Man of the Century (1997), that will make airport buyers want to miss their flights. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

When Joe Durant gets news of an airplane crash outside Seattle, a "terminal event" with no survivors, the distressed former National Transportation Safety Board investigator rushes to the site -- his wife was one of the passengers. Desperate to find answers for his devastated fifteen-year-old daughter, his hunt for clues becomes obsessive. But while he meticulously wades through the wreckage and collects evidence pointing to sabotage, higher powers are determined to blame the tragedy on pilot error.

Now the bomber has stepped forward and promised to strike again within ten days...and Durant must race to avert another ghastly catastrophe.

Exploring the grimly fascinating world of NTSB crash investigators in riveting, authentic detail, Terminal Event is a page-turning suspense thriller whose shocking ending will leave you gasping.