The book starts with a call from an unknown person to emergency services. The caller is at the airport, and he can see that a plane has exploded.
The novel is mainly told from the perspective of Mina and Adam, who are married. Mina is a flight attendant, and her next service is on a new line that travels from London to Sydney nonstop for twenty hours. Mina has a daughter, Sophia, who is five. Sophia is adopted and has some behavioural problems because of the way her birth mother treated her. Mina's husband Adam is a police officer, but now they are separate as Mina discovered that there had been something going on with their au pair, Katya. One day Katya had packed her bags and was very upset, and she said that she couldn't go on with all the lying, looking at Adam, so Mina guessed that her husband has slept with the au pair. Yet, I think that the reason why Katya left is something else.
Adam has been summoned by his superior because they have noticed that his official phone expenditure goes beyond the normal use, and they are going to check the calls. Adam is afraid because it seems that he has been something illegal and he is going to be found out. When Mina leaves for work, he looks after Sophia with the help of their nanny, Becca. We understand from Adam's perspective that Sophia has problems showing her affection to him, and she is very attached to Mina, which hurts Adam. Then that night Sophia acts up, escaping to the park where he and Becca find her playing. And then a man appears at his door, demanding something which Adam claims he doesn't have, and the man hits him several times. I wonder what Adam has got into. Drugs?
MIna has been nervous about this flight, especially when a woman tells her that the tests that the company have done beforehand weren't totally successful. MIna tries to forget about that, but she is nervous. On the plane she is assigned to business class. From her thoughts we understand that there have been some strange things happening. Once someone poured petrol and set fire to her front door, and it was strange that Adam appeared at that exact moment. And now she finds Sophia's ipen among her things, and it should have been at home. Mina can't think how Sophia's ipen can have appeared in her work bag when she never puts it there.
Then suddenly someone dies during the flight.
The novel is interspersed with chapters told from the view of different passengers. There is Sandra Daniels, who has left her abusive husband, and Michael Prendergast, who tells us about his very mean parents. When he was a child, his parents bought business class tickets but they got him economy class. His grandmother told him that it was his father who was stingy, and when she died, she left everything to Michael, angering his father. So now he can use his money to go first class.
Very interesting start. I am already hooked.
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