The Fall Line

Adrenaline addict and ex-investment banker Jack Farrell is on the run from both federal authorities and a Colombian drug cartel, fleeing to Utah, where he becomes drawn to dangerous people and situations that force him on a collision course with his past. A first novel.

Jack Farrell is a man on the run in this first novel from an investigative journalist. A bank executive until he was enticed into laundering money for a South American drug operation, Farrell, having had plastic surgery and taken a new identity, has returned to the Utah ski area where he mastered the sport years earlier. But the same recklessness that led him into money laundering now prompts him to participate in a series of dangerous downhill performances for French filmmaker Inez Didier, who seems to thrive on watching others risk their lives. As the story of the ski tour into hell unfolds, Jack's past is revealed through two story threads. One details his memories of the tragic death of his only child, how he and his wife Lena drifted apart under the emotional strain of their loss and how he became part of the drug cartel. The other arises from Lena's diary, which Jack is reading for the first time, and offers a different perspective on events. What happened to Jack and Lena and why he is on the run are far more interesting than the various accounts of daredevil skiing exploits (including one in which the skiers are blindfolded). A final, dramatic run down the dangerous slopes of the Grand Tetons brings matters to a climax in this offbeat thriller, which could have benefited from tighter editing.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An unintriguing post-felony intrigue with a hero who gets away from it all (dead wife and child, pursuit by Latin American drug lords, burial in federal witness protection program) by hitting the slopes big time. Jack Farrell's an adrenaline addict who--we learn in flashback--responded to the crib death of his baby daughter by whisking his grieving wife, Lena, a nurse wrestling with demons he was only dimly aware of, away from Chicago to California. His boring, lucrative new job there as head of tiny San Diego First Fidelity's foreign investment department offered one chance for excitement: sending the department's capital base skyrocketing by accepting the dubious transactions of Mexican importer-exporter Gabriel Cortez. Jack gradually realized he was getting taken for a ride by a Colombian drug cartel, but he couldn't help himself: ``Farrell was now fully into the world of money-laundering, hooked on the rush, a junkie for danger.'' Now, back in a present sans Lena, his parents, his bank job, and his old identity, he takes a novel approach to going underground, agreeing to appear in megalomaniac film director Inez Didier's documentary on extreme skiing--a devil's compact that'll take him on some hair-raising downhills from Utah to Tahoe to the Tetons, with vampirish Inez constantly devising new challenges (collision-course skiing, skiing blindfolded, skiing on thawed snow) for Jack and his fellow recruits, one-eyed Matthew Page and Rastaman Jerry Milburn (a.k.a The Wave). The endless ski sequences push so hard for excitement that they become narcotizing. Like Jack, Lena, and Gabriel, Inez is battling nasty family memories (Do you think these guys could all be related?) that produce terrific footage, sex-and-power games, and broad portents of disaster. First-novelist Sullivan tries for Hemingway on powder but ends up remaking The Stunt Man with Leni Riefenstahl in the Peter O'Toole role, intercut with soporific flashbacks to a B-grade drug film. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This first novel, a thriller involving international banking, drug dealing, money laundering, and world-class skiing, is an ambitious approach to the genre that somehow fails to reach the mark. Sullivan, an award-winning investigative reporter, aptly describes the Western mountain scenery and the emotions of "skiing on the edge." It is in the complex weaving of different timelines and his depictions of the various characters and their motivations, emotions, and interactions that the novel fails. The reader feels the rush of the wind, the sting of the ice pellets, and the joyous freedom and fear of racing down a dangerous slope. Aside from these high points, there is little of interest in the story itself or the characters. This novel might find a readership among skiers, but fans of suspense won't be impressed. Most libraries can pass on this one.
Erna Chamberlain, SUNY at Binghamton
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.