All Fall Down

Gruenfeld's second novel (after Irreparable Harm ) explores the chilling prospect of an evil genius who demands $5 million to refrain from misdirecting the navigational systems of commercial airliners. While Captain Marvel, the extortionist, plays cross-country leapfrog to withdraw ransom payments from ATM machines, FBI agent Jack Webster and his former girl Friday, Dr. Amy Goldberg, head a team of bumbling bureaucrats and private sector techno-jocks intent on stopping the malevolent phantom. Sharply contrasted with the tense central narrative is a subtly drawn counterplot about Bo Kincaid, a black flying ace decorated in WW II and Vietnam who still pilots his restored P-51D. Fully imagined--though occasionally overwritten and over-moralized--Gruenfeld's plot is played out by well-defined characters and punctuated by painful reminders of racism and equality. This intriguing amalgam of thriller and psychodrama is distinguished by a high sense of realism as, inexorably, events draw Jack and Bo toward a fateful intersection with the terrorist. (Aug.)