ARC courtesy NetGalley – release date 2 June 2021 in Australia.
There is a certain familiarity that comes with airline hijacking narratives.
Naturally, there is always a sense of mounting tension as innocent parties embark on what they think will be a trouble-free journey only to discover that their flight is going to be anything but routine and could well be the very end of them.
Then there are the stock standard characters – the protagonist with their figurative or literal head on the chopping block forced to do unthinkable things in the name of survival, or the passenger who rises to the occasion, determined not to let terrible injustices go unchallenged.
Or the flight attendant who finds hidden reserves of strength within herself and fights back in ways that impress the passengers and reinforce an oft-repeated notion that she’s not dying yet!
But where would all these characters be without a cardboard cutout bad guy/s who threaten and cajole, bully and manipulate to see their goals realised only to be bested, and they are always bested, by a hero far stronger and more right than they are.
Or by law enforcement who are so clueless that it takes them ages to realise that the hero or the renegade agent is RIGHT. Completely, utterly, inarguably RIGHT.
It’s all very predictable and all very just and certain and in a sense that’s what appeals to people.
“‘Bill. Relax,’ Sam taunted, relishing his visible agitation. ‘You’re working way too hard to figure out a solution when–spoiler–there isn’t one. So just let that hero shit go. You will make a choice. Your family, or the plane. And if the sacrifice is the plane, throwing the canister is part of the deal. Period.’ Sam leaned forward, resting his interlocking fingers on the desk, the detonator clutched in his grip. ‘And Bill? Just so you know? I’m not an idiot. There is, absolutely, a back up plan right there on board. You will, one way or another, make a choice.'” (P. 34)
Thankfully while Falling by T. J. Newman does contain many of these expected elements, and doesn’t really subvert them in any substantial way, it does try hard to deliver the expected thrills and spills but do it in such a way that your intelligence isn’t insulted and your humanity feels it has been listened to in some way.
It’s not always entirely successful in this regard and it does in many ways end up feeling like a brilliantly well-done homage to ’70s plane disaster films and ’90s action films, but overall, Falling is a cracking good that remembers that we all need a healthy slice of humanity to go with our larger-than-life storytelling.
The humanity comes courtesy of two major characters – Captain Bill Hoffman, a veteran pilot of Coastal Airways who’s known for his dedication to the job, his integrity and his love for his wife Carrie and their two kids.
He is, however you slice it, a stand-up guy, the sort of person that no antagonist in their right mind would actually want to mess with; naturally, of course, one does, and they, and this will not surprise you in this least, are all the poorer for it.
He is close friends with head flight attendant, Jo, a non-nonsense, eminently capable and kind-hearted person who is damn good at her day job and just as good, as it turns out, in dealing with a devious terrorist threat.
But here’s where the rather too obvious characterisation and possibly ham-fisted narrative comes abruptly to an end.
Captain Hoffman may sound from the review’s brief description like some lumbering hero without a brain, a man who takes down the bad guys, even with his wife and kids held captive thousands of miles below, and barely breaks a sweat doing it.
But in Newman’s hands, a flight attendant of many years standing who knows the type of people who work in the industry and their strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly what makes them human, Hoffman comes across as a thinking man’s hero, the sort of person who agonises over every move he makes, not in some sort of debilitating way but in way that presages action with thoughtfulness.
He also cares and even in the middle of a terrifying experience, he has the empathy to understand why the people who are using his kidnapped family to force him to crash flight 416 into the ground, are not as obviously evil as he wants them to be.
That awareness doesn’t take away from his anguish one bit and nor does it diminish the endless, page-turning tension in the plot; what it does do, and do quite effectively, is add some real humanity to both Hoffman and the terrorists, all of whom are presented warts and all but with an inherent understanding that life is rarely singularly black and white.
“Jo stood next to Kellie on the other side of the galley curtain, listening to the sounds in the cabin. Right after they stopped the video, all three had held their breath. Would there be screaming? Pandemonium? About a minute had passed and there hadn’t been much of a reaction at all.” (P. 147)
Jo too is a study in diversion from an empty character trope, as is her nephew who plays a critical role in the law enforcement role (though he is far more caricatured than the two main characters).
She has all the sass and smarts you’d expect but she’s also damn good at her job, a remarkable woman who confronts a host of terrifying challenges but who also admits to being scared and uncertain.
She is, in other words, wonderfully, reassuringly, human, all of which means that we get our thrilling action plot, our do-or-die moments but not at the expense of actually feeling something.
That’s rare in a novel like Falling, a certified member of a genre that is all too apt to push the pedal to the metal without stopping to consider if the people involved in the resultant action are going to be cared about at all.
The fact is that for all the cliches and well-worn tropes – they are effectively employed but still there in abundance – Falling is a rip-roaringly good read, an action fest high in the airs with heart, soul, and a real focus on social justice (though that’s not always smoothly woven in) that will leave you turning the pages with feverish alacrity even if you know exactly where it’s going at all times.
It’s proof that you can take a well-travelled genre (pun completely intended) and make something new and interesting of it with Falling one of those enormously entertaining reads that realise, thankfully, that you can have your pell-mell action and still have a beating heart and affecting humanity too.