Book review: Night Fall

Nelson DeMille is the author of: By the Rivers of Babylon, Cathedral, The Talbot Odyssey, Word of Honor, The Charm School, The Gold Coast, The General's Daughter, Spencerville, Plum Island, The Lion's Game, Up Country, and NIGHT FALL, released in November 2004; he also co-authored Mayday with Thomas Block.

Type Flight 900 into any search engine and you will receive hundreds of links on both the crash of TWA Flight 800 and conspiracy theories of what truly happened. Pick up the newer Nelson DeMille novel Night Fall and read an entirely new perspective of the incident. At dusk on July 17, 1996, on a deserted Long Island beach, a couple in the throws of an extra marital relationship takes a step towards uninhibited sexual bliss. Rather than a truly erotic movie, they inadvertently film the explosion of TWA 800.

Five years later, ex-NYPD detective and present contract agent with the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force [ATTF], John Corey, becomes entangled in a web of deceit as he takes a second look at what actually happened to Flight 800. Corey uses his detective instinct and a no-holes-barred attitude to learn what the FBI and CIA want him to disregard.

Despite the obstacles placed in his path, Corey discovers what high ranking FBI and CIA officials already know. This is a page turner, a novel that makes you reconsider everything you think you know. A Must read!

Book Review: Death du Jour

Kathy Reichs
Death du Jour 1999

How can an anthropologist attempting to certify bones of a Nun dunned for sainthood manage to get caught up in a doomsday cult? As usual, Dr. Tempe Brennan has inadvertently become involved in a run for her life mystery in Death Du Jour.

Of course, there are many inadvertent avenues Dr. Brennan takes to get herself into these life and death situations, and who would think that helping Nuns at a convent would lead to a near death experience?

As Dr. Brennan begins examining the bones of Sister Elizabeth Nicolet, she determines that a family secret must play an important part of the deceased nun’s, unprepared to confront the Nun’s in regards to her suspicions, Tempe calls the convent asking questions she hopes will lead her to the truth of her discovery. Rather than ask questions which would expose the reasoning behind the questions, Tempe asks indirect questions which lead her to a professor at McGill College.

Before she can schedule a meeting with the professor she is called in to assist the Quebec Police on a fire victim case. At the scene, Tempe realizes that this is more than a victim of a fire, the bones she has been sent to retrieve are from a murder victim. Within 24 hours, more victims are found. The murder investigation leads the Quebec Police and Dr. Tempe Brennan to her home element in South Carolina.

Each step along the way leads the investigators to more victims and more suspects; the prime suspect being The McGill College Professor and a millennium cult. The action intensifies when Tempe is attacked, first on the street and then by a fire bomb through her kitchen window. To top things off, her younger sister shows up to attend classes at McGill, only to disappear without a trace.

Fast paced, page turning thrills from beginning to end. This by far, is one of the best Tempe Brennan series.