Investigators work to unravel a terrorist plot bringing down American planes in John, McKinley, and Bell’s suspense novel.

A hijacking brings down a plane in New Jersey. National Transportation Safety Board forensic inspector Dave Doyle is assigned to investigate; it’s not clear what happened, aside from the plane catching fire before it hit the ground. Medical student Sarah Hart is on another plane when a passenger—another hijacker—has a seizure; she saves him, but when he gets away, the FBI asks her to come talk to them. FBI agent Angelica Smith gets involved; she and Dave’s team speculate that an unruly passenger heard on the plane’s audio recorder may have started a fire in a lavatory, and that the fire spread to the cockpit, causing the plane to go down, but it’s not clear if this was an accident or intentional. Shortly thereafter, another plane crashes in the exact same way the first one did (“The nose…was buried in its own pit, badly burned from the second bulkhead to the cockpit. The same, the same, the same”). The investigation then turns from finding out what happened to figuring how to stop it from happening again, especially if the terrorists have a bigger target—such as the White House—in mind. Some of the exposition is a little clunky, but there are some nice side trips into the personal lives of the characters that make them feel like fully fleshed-out people. Readers get insights into the terrorists, too, mostly from the point of view of a doctor named Samid who is roped into the plot somewhat against his will. Hassan, the ringleader, seems to be unambiguously evil; Samid thinks of him as “Insane Hassan.” While the story takes place in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, it feels like it could have been written right after 9/11—suspense builds effectively throughout as the investigators unravel a seemingly unstoppable plot.

An intriguing aeronautic thriller.