A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Lots of initial promise, but the plot proves improbable and the execution melodramatic.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Lyse-Rose’s older sister, Malvina, is a heavy-handed villain Emilie’s brother, Marc, is also the girl’s lover, adding the possibility of incest to the mix and Grand Duc’s recounting of the events, in a notebook he left behind at his death, is a meandering mess that’s like a long-winded uncle stretching a one-minute story into a three-hour monologue. Bussi has an intriguing premise, but many things about his narrative will frustrate readers, including DNA test results that no one bothers to read, and when people do, they keep the results secret. Complicated by the fact that DNA was not a commonplace identifying tool until the later 1980s, the action moves back and forth over the years as the two families tussle over the child, to the present day of the book, which is 1998. Crédule Grand Duc, a private investigator hired by the de Carvilles to prove the child is their Lyse-Rose and not Emilie Vitral, has finally determined the child’s identity. But a man who has investigated the case for 18 years is at the center of the drama. Up springs a battle to claim the little girl, with a rich family, the de Carvilles, on one side and a poor family, the Vitrals, on the other. The 3-month-old baby is immediately hailed as a miracle child and would be reunited with her grandparents except for one small problem: there were two baby girls on the flight, and neither set of grandparents has ever seen their granddaughters. Everyone aboard is killed, but searchers find one survivor, an infant girl who's been improbably thrown from the plane. It’s 1980, and a plane en route from Istanbul to Paris crashes into the side of a mountain.

A plane crash and the identity of its lone survivor form the delicious premise for Bussi’s novel.

After the crash by michel bussi