Before The Fall

The Man Who Cheated Death

Noah Hawley’s terrific suspense thriller, Before The Fall  begins with a routine boarding on a plane from the posh haunt of the rich, Martha’s Vineyard—the only thing is that it is a private aircraft, and the owner David Bateman is a self-made media baron. On the plane his wife Maggie, kids Rachel and JJ, his friend Ben Kipling (in deep financial trouble) and his wife Sarah, a bodyguard, and the crew.  The surprise passenger is an artist Scott Burroughs—maybe a friend of Maggie maybe something more. 

A few minutes into the flight, the plane crashes, Scott finds himself in the freezing water, along with four-year-old JJ.  Once a champion swimmer, who had turned alcoholic and then cleaned up his act, Scott swims several miles to safety with a busted arm and JJ on his back. It’s a miraculous story of survival and heroism, though Scott does not want media attention. His very reticence ends up making him a suspect. To boost the channel’s ratings, Bill Milligan, a popular anchor on Bateman’s channel, whip up a frenzy of conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s sister Eleanor and her deadbeat husband Doug find themselves thrust into the role of JJ’s wards, with his large inheritance causing a lot of problems. Eleanor is embarrassed by Doug’s open greed at the prospect of such wealth, and refuses to use any of it for herself.  An unambitous woman very different from Maggie, she tries to bring some stability into the life of her nephew, too young to understand death, yet old enough to suffer the consequences of his fate.

Once the nerve-wracking event is over in the first few pages,  Hawley goes back and forth, in time, examining each character, their past, their mindset, their motivations. The secondary characters-- pilot, co-pilot, stewardess and Bateman’s bodyguard, nine-year-old Rachel also get their own backstories and each one is a wonderful red herring.  For instance, the reader would wonder what connection Rachel’s kidnapping in the past has to the plane crash that kills her.

Somewhere in there is a who, why and how, and the layers of suspense are built up brilliantly. Scott gets into trouble, in spite of his superhuman feat, because he had been painting a series of disasters; that and the fact that an impoverished artist had no business being in such luxurious surroundings  to begin with.

The reader has been with him on that arduous swim, and is on his side. But Bill Milligan does everything he can to paint him as a villain who is pulling a con on the public. How could a properly checked aircraft with very little chance of malfunctioning crash just like that? There could be people who wanted Bateman or Kipling dead, so was it an accident or mass murder?  In the midst of all the hysteria, poor JJ, who has gone through a trauma no kid should suffer, finds refuge in silence and in protesting attempts to cut his hair. Before The Fall is a very readable book.

Before the Fall

By Noah Hawley

Publisher: Grand Central/Hachette

Pages: 391 pages