Worst Case Scenario
by TJ Newman
Former flight attendant TJ Newman showed a great knack for taking readers on white-knuckle thrill rides with her first two novels, Falling and Drowning, and now presses all the alarm bells with an even more terrifying premise: what if a commercial airliner crashed into a nuclear power plant? As the Arizona author recently discussed in an interview, while such a situation is extremely unlikely, it’s those types of “low-probability, high-consequence” events she writes about in her novels that pilots truly fear. Despite all the well-drilled safety procedures airliners and power plants have to prevent, mitigate or contain accidents, chains of events exist, however unlikely, that could lead to disaster.
Newman’s novel delivers exactly that: when a pilot suffers a massive heart attack at 35,000 feet while his co-pilot is in the bathroom, the commercial airliner crashes into the Clover Hill nuclear power plant in Waketa, Minnesota.
The two worst nuclear accidents on record are Fukushima and Chernobyl; now Clover Hill roars past them. As the world watches on, it’s up to ordinary people – power plant employees, firefighters, local teachers – to try to deal with an unimaginable crisis that threatens their town and the world at large.
Newman delivers a terrifying, tense read that is threaded with humanity. A high-concept thriller that would translate well to the big screen, Worst Case Scenario also has plenty of heart, as we see the human impact of unfolding events through the eyes of various characters, from workers to first responders, local children and the US president.
Hunted
by Abir Mukherjee
After racking up awards and acclaim for his excellent Wyndham and Bannerjee historical mystery series set in 1920s Raj-era India, Scottish author Abir Mukherjee successfully swerves into a new sub-genre with Hunted, a contemporary thriller. Like Newman, Mukherjee focuses on ordinary people caught up in extraordinary, terrifying circumstances and a clock ticking down to disaster. In this case, a terrorism plot.
Days before a pivotal US presidential election, a bombing in Los Angeles kills dozens of people. An organisation called the Sons of Caliphate claims responsibility and demands prisoner releases or there will be more violence.
In London, Muslim refugee Sajid Khan is accosted by armed police and subjected to an “ends justify the means” interrogation as he learns his teenage daughter Aliyah has links to the suicide bomber. Then a woman turns up at his door, saying Aliyah is with her son Greg, a US military veteran, and she thinks she knows where they are. Can they find their kids? Meanwhile, federal agent Shreya Mistry is also hunting the two fugitives. But is everything as clear-cut as it seems?
While Mukherjee treads the road of “massive terrorism threat on US soil” that several other thriller writers have over the years, he brings a welcome fresh perspective in Hunted, a tale that is further elevated by his layered structuring and storytelling. It’s a gripping read that delves into the people behind the politics, dosed with a few surprises.
Other recent good reads:
Chris Brookmyre’s new novel The Cracked Mirror is a mind-bending masterpiece in which a Miss Marple-type sleuth forms an unlikely pairing with a hard-boiled LA detective. And Steve Cavanagh continues his excellent series starring conman-turned-defence lawyer Eddie Flynn with Witness 8.
