2005 Year in Review

Night Fall

By Nelson DeMille

At dusk on July 17, 1996, on a deserted Long Island, a terrible blast lights the dark summer sky. TWA Flight 800 has just exploded in midair with 230 people on board. Sound familiar? It should because this happened. DeMille’s book Night Fall is based upon this horrific air accident. Or is it an accident?

Five years later, after the government has declared the crash a result of mechanical failure, John Corey, and ex NYPD detective and now employed with the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is persuaded by his wife Kate Mayfield, an FBI agent, to give the case a second look.

What John finds is the over two hundred of the eye witnesses involved claim to have seen the same thing that night: a bright ascending light, as from a rocket launcher, rising and meeting the doomed TWA flight thus, causing the explosion. John also discovers that very, very few of these eyewitnesses’ statements made it into the total investigation. After discussing this with several seemingly reliable witnesses, John longs for someone to have made a video of that night.

John and Kate set out to reopen the case and discover its most crucial piece of evidence. However, John and Kate are warned by superiors to stay away from this case, and a conspiracy, at the highest level, begins to unravel. The hunt for the videotape is a race toward an elusive and lethal truth that shocks.

This is a fast paced book with facts intertwined with fiction. DeMille is a master storyteller with several other highly regarded novels to his credit: The General’s Daughter, Plum Island, The Gold Coast and more. I greatly enjoyed the book as I kept turning the pages hunting for clues with John and Kate. An exciting read for a cold winter night!

by Anne Frame, Guest Columnist
January 6, 2005