Due Preparations for the Plague

by JanetteTurnerHospital (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $4.42

  A taut and confronting novel that propels us into the chaos of terror and the cruelty - and unexpected hope - of survival. Lowell tries not to think about the past, about the hijacking that killed his mother. Samantha, on the other hand, cannot let the past go. As a child she survived the hijacking of Air France 064, and as an adult she obsessively digs for answers. Specifically, she wants to find a shadowy figure called Salamander, a man she believes was a key player in the unravelling of the tragedy. It is the death of Lowell's father, and his legacy of a blue sports bag crammed with documents and videotapes, that finally brings Lowell and Samantha together and reveals the interconnections between victims and perpetrators, saved and damned. But in this murky world of endless ailiases and surveillance, who can be trusted? When does the quest for truth become a dangerous obsession? And what difference can the truth make?

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.27

  From the author of Oyster comes a powerful and gripping literary thriller that is as timely and relevant as it is chilling. Lowell feels contagious with doom. A divorced father with young children, he dreads the anniversary of a hijacked Paris-New York flight on which his mother was killed when he was sixteen years old. Samantha, a survivor of the disaster, is plaguing Lowell with phone calls. She says she has information from declassified documents and is obsessed with learning the whole truth about Air France 64. 'What can be worse than not knowing?' she asks. But Lowell only wants to forget. When his father dies suddenly and mysteriously on the anniversary of the hijacking, leaving Lowell the key to a locker in an airport terminal, a terrible story unfurls before him. Together, he and Samantha find the inescapable truth bearing down on them with the force of a jumbo jet. Janette Turner Hospital's electrifying novel probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering, the experience of terror and the meaning of survival.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $18.17

  A major literary voice spins a psychological terror tale in the mode of John Le Carre. Lowell, a single father, is haunted by the memory of a hijacked Paris-New York flight on which his mother was killed when he was a teenager. A stranger, Samantha, has recently begun harassing him with phone calls about information from declassified documents. She is obsessed with learning the whole truth about Air France 64. I was on that flight. I was six years old. I have a right, she says. What can be worse than not knowing? Janette Turner Hospital's electrifying new novel is a tightly woven web of familial and national histories, of sexual and political passions, and of individual and national complicities in the age of terrorism. She probes with astonishing acuity the murky worlds of espionage and intelligence gathering, and the painful meaning of survival.