All Fall Down

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Gruenfeld's second novel (after Irreparable Harm ) explores the chilling prospect of an evil genius who demands $5 million to refrain from misdirecting the navigational systems of commercial airliners. While Captain Marvel, the extortionist, plays cross-country leapfrog to withdraw ransom payments from ATM machines, FBI agent Jack Webster and his former girl Friday, Dr. Amy Goldberg, head a team of bumbling bureaucrats and private sector techno-jocks intent on stopping the malevolent phantom. Sharply contrasted with the tense central narrative is a subtly drawn counterplot about Bo Kincaid, a black flying ace decorated in WW II and Vietnam who still pilots his restored P-51D. Fully imagined--though occasionally overwritten and over-moralized--Gruenfeld's plot is played out by well-defined characters and punctuated by painful reminders of racism and equality. This intriguing amalgam of thriller and psychodrama is distinguished by a high sense of realism as, inexorably, events draw Jack and Bo toward a fateful intersection with the terrorist. (Aug.)

Library Journal

Jack Webster, a retired investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, is asked to help with one last case. Webster and his team, aided by a computer expert, track a deranged genius who is bent on controlling the nation's airways by manipulating the navigational systems of large planes. Chased by demons in his past, Webster pursues the maniac to Los Angeles. With the help of a veteran fighter pilot haunted by his own past, he brings the killer to divine justice at the center of a huge fireball. Gruenfeld (Irreparable Harm, LJ 5/1/93) breathes life into his characters with detailed flashbacks ranging in setting from the skies over Germany during World War II to the napalm-riddled jungles of Vietnam. He spins a fine tale of suspense that even an aeronautical neophyte will enjoy. Recommended for all public libraries.-Grant A. Fredericksen, Illinois Prairie Dist. P.L., Metamora

George Needham

Occasionally you find a suspense novel that grabs you by the throat in the opening chapter and doesn't let go until the epilogue. This does just that. It follows the psychological and technological battle between an extortionist and the guardians of our air-traffic control system. The extortionist threatens to disrupt the automated communications between airliners and their controllers unless a $5 million ransom is paid through a national network of ATMs. To prove the threat, the extortionist knocks an airliner full of passengers several miles off course while it's landing in a storm. FBI agent Jack Webster and Amy Goldberg, a psychologist who's worked for the CIA, are assigned to find the extortionist without losing any planes. Gruenfeld shows a mastery of plotting and characterization that more than justify the promise shown in his first novel, Irreparable Harm (1993). His nonsexist role casting is notable and welcome in a genre which is rarely PC. This should be a very popular novel in public libraries; recommend it to your Tom Clancy fans.