Before the Fall, by Noah Hawley

In this riveting, suspenseful novel by Noah Hawley, artist Scott Burroughs and a four-year-old boy are the only survivors of a plane crash off the coast of Long Island. Scott manages to swim to shore with the boy, but then becomes the focus of a media storm that questions how he was the only adult survivor. Was the crash an accident, or was the plane's owner (and the boy's father) the target because of his high-profile position as the owner of a news corporation? Was Scott having an affair with the owner's wife? Was someone after the vast fortune that the boy is set to inherit?

Many players enter the scene, trying to find the answers to these questions. The FBI, the NTSB, the media, and Scott himself are all trying to find out what happened. The novel explores each of the plane's passengers in turn, allowing the reader to become familiar with each character on the plane, and one by one eliminates them from consideration as a suspect or target. The author keeps us guessing until the end, when the culprit is revealed with a surprisingly banal motive. The writing is very good, with excellent character development and thoughtful explorations of how the media can create a story out of nothing.

I received this book at the 2016 BookExpo America convention, held at the McCormick Center in Chicago, IL.

Noah Hawley. Before the Fall. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2016. Advance Reading Copy/Uncorrected Proof. 390 pages. ISBN 9781455561780.