Before the Fall

I'm of two minds about Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. On the one hand, it is an untaxing, disposable mystery, the kind that used to be found on revolving racks of paperbacks in drugstores (I would have said airports, but I doubt it since it's about an airplane crash). On the other hand, in has no action, and takes itself awfully seriously. When a beach read tries to present itself as literature, there can be a problem.

The books begins with a plane crash: "And as they rise up through the foggy white, talking and laughing, serenaded by the songs of 1950s crooners and the white noise of the long at bat, none of them has any idea that sixteen minutes from now their plane will crash into the sea." A chartered plane, carrying some important people, goes into the drink between Martha's Vineyard and Long Island. Only two survive--a painter who was not even supposed to be on board, and a four-year old boy. What caused the crash?

That last question is the entirety of the book. In between the crash and the end Hawley tells us the life stories of everyone board. There's the head of a Fox News-like organization and his wife and two children. A financier who is about to be indicted for laundering money from evil nations, and his wife. A British pilot, a Texan co-pilot who seems suspiciously like George W. Bush, and the flight attendant he's in love with.

While Hawley spins these plates in the air, the painter, Scott Burroughs, is hounded by the media. Some call him a hero--he swam eight miles with the child on his back to safety--while others view him with suspicion. Foremost of these is a TV host called Bill Cunningham, who is clearly modeled after Bill O'Reilly (but given Larry King's suspenders). Hawley didn't even bother changing the first name. The climax of the book is twofold--when the black box recording is discovered and reveals all, and when Burroughs faces off against Cunningham on the latter's own show.

Hawley could have stood to refresh himself with Elmore Leonard's rules, namely number 10: "Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip." When the recordings are pulled out of the water, do we really need to read about how Thomas Edison was on the forefront of recording technology?

Because of the way Before the Fall is structured, most of the book is red herrings, and you may feel cheated because of that. Essentially he's written a book of character studies, and they're not all that vivid. We get filigrees of detail, such as that a guy left a girl for not just a rock musician, but a bass player in a Japanese surf band. Or that an Israeli bodyguard took the virginity of Angelina Jolie. Weird. I hope she never reads the book.

Before the Fall is not too demanding on the cerebral cortex, but I do feel like it had no calories whatsoever and was kind of a waste of my time.