A major problem with After the Crash is that its central device is a memoir written by the private investigator. The book moves from intriguing, through improbable, to ridiculous as it progresses. That’s a damn intriguing set-up and I was very much looking forward to finding out what happened. He puts the gun down, then sets out to tell his employers. As he places the gun against his head, he notices something on the newspaper report from the day of the crash, and the puzzle is solved. He failed, and now feels the need to kill himself. To find hard evidence, where the court only found the balance of probability. A private investigator was hired to try to determine the true identity of the girl. We pick up the action eighteen years later. Which one survived? The courts have to decide.
There were two babies on board the flight, one from a rich, one poor. The recent tragedy in France made the description of a plane full of passengers crashing into a mountainside even more evocative. The opening of After the Crash is chilling.
More disturbing, on top of After the Crash on my to-be-read pile was How to Stay Alive, Matt Haig’s excellent memoir on dealing with depression. By the time I took the book down to read, the premise was creepily prescient. A plane has crashed in the French Alps, killing everybody on board. When the book arrived on my doorstep its premise sounded delicious. If I came down with a bad case of diarrhoea, then I might see that After the Crash is an essential book to have by my side, though the paper wouldn’t be anywhere near as porous as the plot. There is no godly reason why this should be a ‘must-read’. I then remembered that the most read review on Robins Books is my non-complimentary analysis of I am Pilgrim, a novel I’ll never understand why people like. It had a card under it that said something like ‘Set to be the must-read thriller of the year.’ This was like red rag to a bull. Then, in my (otherwise wonderful) local Waterstone’s I found it prominently displayed at the front of the shop. I wasn’t going to review After the Crash.
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