All Fall Down - Hardcover

Gruenfeld, Lee

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0446517143 ISBN 13: 9780446517140

Publisher: Grand Central Pub, 1994

Synopsis

After the near-crash of a passenger plane, the responsible party demands five million in cash to prevent worse accidents, and former NTSB investigator and Naval officer Jack Webster and combat pilot Bo Kincaid are partnered to investigate--if they can trust each other

About this title

Reviews

Gruenfeld's second novel (after Irreparable Harm ) explores the chilling prospect of an evil genius who demands $5 million to refrain from misdirecting the navigational systems of commercial airliners. While Captain Marvel, the extortionist, plays cross-country leapfrog to withdraw ransom payments from ATM machines, FBI agent Jack Webster and his former girl Friday, Dr. Amy Goldberg, head a team of bumbling bureaucrats and private sector techno-jocks intent on stopping the malevolent phantom. Sharply contrasted with the tense central narrative is a subtly drawn counterplot about Bo Kincaid, a black flying ace decorated in WW II and Vietnam who still pilots his restored P-51D. Fully imagined--though occasionally overwritten and over-moralized--Gruenfeld's plot is played out by well-defined characters and punctuated by painful reminders of racism and equality. This intriguing amalgam of thriller and psychodrama is distinguished by a high sense of realism as, inexorably, events draw Jack and Bo toward a fateful intersection with the terrorist.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A nifty couple of ideas for domestic-aviation extortion are buried deep under acres of sawdust in this swollen thriller from Gruenfeld (Irreparable Harm, 1993). When an Alpha Airlines 727, guided by the latest in computerized guidance systems, overshoots its landing field and nearly crashes into the campus of Western Washington University, the troubleshooters--headed by National Transportation Safety Board investigator Amy Goldberg and FBI agent Jack Webster (ex-Navy, ex- NTSB)--soon realize (nifty idea #1) the problem is with the guidance system itself: Somebody's been able to send the plane signals misdirecting its landing with unnerving predictability. How unnerving? Well, a demand for a $5 million payoff describing the plane's erratic behavior was sent to the NTSB hours before the near-fatal mishap. As Goldberg and Webster hustle to satisfy the terms dictated by the blackmailer they've come to call Captain Marvel, and as they watch the $5 million they've deposited in the FundsNet interbank system get siphoned off in (nifty idea #2) a series of ATM withdrawals, they scramble to figure out who Marvel is, why the blackmail figure is so low, how anybody could tamper with the AutoNav systems, and what action they can take to prevent another catastrophe. But after the mass AutoNav reprogramming they've relied on falls disastrously short, after they cut off the ATM withdrawals at $2 million (at the insistence of a know-nothing senator), and after Marvel choreographs a fatal Alpha crash outside Indianapolis, they realize they'll have to rely on outsized individual heroes like ATM designer Florence Hartzig, maverick microchip designer Phyllis Dalek (but where is she, and why won't she call her office?), and, ultimately, veteran fighter pilot Bo Kincaid. Throughout, beefy chunks of flashback substitute for character development and head off the threat of sustained suspense. The result is a lumpy, lumbering union of John Waynes of both sexes. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Jack Webster, a retired investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, is asked to help with one last case. Webster and his team, aided by a computer expert, track a deranged genius who is bent on controlling the nation's airways by manipulating the navigational systems of large planes. Chased by demons in his past, Webster pursues the maniac to Los Angeles. With the help of a veteran fighter pilot haunted by his own past, he brings the killer to divine justice at the center of a huge fireball. Gruenfeld (Irreparable Harm, LJ 5/1/93) breathes life into his characters with detailed flashbacks ranging in setting from the skies over Germany during World War II to the napalm-riddled jungles of Vietnam. He spins a fine tale of suspense that even an aeronautical neophyte will enjoy. Recommended for all public libraries.
Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Occasionally you find a suspense novel that grabs you by the throat in the opening chapter and doesn't let go until the epilogue. This does just that. It follows the psychological and technological battle between an extortionist and the guardians of our air-traffic control system. The extortionist threatens to disrupt the automated communications between airliners and their controllers unless a $5 million ransom is paid through a national network of ATMs. To prove the threat, the extortionist knocks an airliner full of passengers several miles off course while it's landing in a storm. FBI agent Jack Webster and Amy Goldberg, a psychologist who's worked for the CIA, are assigned to find the extortionist without losing any planes. Gruenfeld shows a mastery of plotting and characterization that more than justify the promise shown in his first novel, Irreparable Harm (1993). His nonsexist role casting is notable and welcome in a genre which is rarely PC. This should be a very popular novel in public libraries; recommend it to your Tom Clancy fans. George Needham

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0446517143
• ISBN 13: 9780446517140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 436