Nance,
John J. Blackout. Putnam. Feb 2000. c430p. ISBN 0-399-14594-X.
$23.95. Fiction.
Here, aviation analyst, former commercial pilot, and novelist
Nance plunges readers into a terrifying nose dive as
SeaAir Flight 122, an MD-11, drops precipitously and
inexplicably from the sky, killing all aboard. Investigative
journalist Robert MacCabe has information implicating
an unknown terrorist group that has made him its next
target and is willing to bring down a 747 to keep him
from unmasking the people behind a secret weapon of
devastating force. For help, MacCabe turns to FBI agent
Kat Bronsky (heroine of Nance’s The Last Hostage), and soon
they find themselves in a deadly race to learn the truth, while elements of the
government (CIA? FBI?) seem arrayed against them. Nance is at his best in several
gripping flight sequences, particularly that of a doomed 747. Though the situations
are sometimes implausible and the characters thin, the melodramatic action, bolstered
by an ever increasing threat, will propel readers at breakneck speed to the final
confrontation. For all public libraries.