Before the fall

LET ME SAY right off the bat, I am a huge fan of the FX television show "Fargo." It seems a reasonable confession to make before I review a novel written by the show's producer/writer/showrunner. Noah Hawley is definitely riding a wave of success right now. The critical and commercial success of "Fargo" has brought him a fistful of industry awards. His show is a real water-cooler conversation starter. But books are different. Hype and advertising and celebrity can certainly get a reader to pick up a novel and read the first few pages. After that, it's all about the words and the characters, the heart and soul of the story. I had no doubt that Hawley could write, that he could create amazing characters, that he had an ear for dialogue and a unique point of view - but could he write a successful novel? The answer, as readers of his four earlier books probably know already, is a resounding yes. Hawley's fifth novel, "Before the Fall," begins on a foggy summer night, with a luxurious private jet awaiting passengers. Not unlike the disaster movies of the 1970s, the story is at first concerned with letting us know who the cast will be. First we are introduced to the pilot, co-pilot and flight attendant, but these introductions are short and to the point. They are not the characters who matter, these sentences imply. Of importance are the passengers. The first to board is the Bateman family. David Bateman, a high-profile, multi-millionaire media mogul, has chartered the jet and arrives with his wife, Maggie, a down-to-earth former preschool teacher, and their children, 9-year-old Rachel and 4-year-old JJ. They are traveling with a security guard named Gil, a man who watches their every move and is armed for their protection. Next to arrive are the Kiplings, Ben and Sarah. Ben is a Wall Street power player, ultrasuccessful. The last to board the jet is Scott Burroughs, a recovering alcoholic and failed artist in his mid-40s who is going to New York with a renewed sense of purpose and a new series of paintings to show. He has been invited onboard by Maggie, to whom he has recently shown his artwork. Eleven people on a plane that will be in the air for exactly 18 minutes before it crashes into the black Atlantic. Surprisingly, Hawley is not really interested in the details of the plane crash itself. He wants to know who and why. Who are these 11 people, really? Why did this jet go down without a single mayday call only 18 minutes after takeoff? To answer these questions, after the crash the novel splits into parallel narratives. In the foreground is the investigation of the crash itself, tracking the search for lost passengers and wreckage as N.T.S.B. agents piece the facts together. Interwoven throughout are chapters that slowly and carefully reveal the back stories of the people who were on the jet. Almost everyone harbors a dark secret or a potentially dangerous past. The novel suffers a bit under the weight of this structure in the beginning. Too many characters are introduced in too few pages, and there's too much repetition. But it doesn't take long for Hawley to hit his stride. Scott Burroughs survives the crash and fights to swim to the surface of the turbulent water, with flames all around him. He hears a small voice crying out for help - a child. Scott finds the boy amid the wreckage and takes hold of him. With the boy on his back, tiny arms clamped around his neck, Scott begins the long, arduous swim to shore. He and 4-year-old JJ Bateman are the only survivors. At first Scott is hailed as a hero. The story of his rescue of the boy and his herculean swim through shark-infested waters explodes onto the 24-hour news cycle. The miraculous rescue story is played and replayed across all networks, but Scott doesn't consider himself heroic, and he wants no part of celebrity. After a wrenching goodbye to the boy he saved, Scott goes into hiding. Struggling as he is with sobriety and the shame of a life poorly lived, the last thing he wants is to be famous. "Talking to people on the subway is one thing," Hawley writes, "but addressing the masses - that's something he can't handle. A statement becomes a pronouncement when delivered to the crowd." SCOTT LEARNS QUICKLY, however, that there is no hiding out from the media, not in this day and age, and not from a disaster of this m agnitude. It instantly becomes a huge story, especially since two of the men on board - David Bateman and Ben Kipling - were multimillionaires. Bateman was best known as the head of a TV network; now, one of his stars, the loudmouthed, archconservative news anchor Bill Cunningham, sees a chance to profit from the tragedy and goes on the offensive, spouting his opinion as "news," demanding answers. Careless with facts, Cunningham fans the flames of anger and strives to create a mob mentality. He begins using words like "terrorism" to describe the crash. He claims it can't be coincidence that two such powerful men were on board a jet that crashed. He blames it on foreign nationals, then the liberal media, and then he finds a better target: Scott Burroughs, the would-be hero. Cunningham broadcasts lies and half truths about Scott's character, casts aspersions, hints at an affair with Maggie Bateman. He taps phones and crosses legal and moral boundaries in pursuit of a truth about which he cares not at all. Bill Cunningham is a portrait of American news/entertainment media at its very worst. Yet as Cunningham pursues his obsession with assigning blame and as the back stories of the characters come to light, there are hints that something sinister may in fact have been behind the crash. Word gets out that Ben Kipling was soon to be indicted for laundering money from hostile nations. The press reminds viewers that the Bateman family had been targeted before: Their daughter, Rachel, was kidnapped years earlier. Scott Burroughs is painted as a philandering opportunist. The news story escalates out of control, becoming a media firestorm. Cunningham uses every trick in the book to vilify Scott and cast doubt on his intentions, which are the same now as they were even before he set foot on the doomed plane: simply to figure out how to survive. Noah Hawley really knows how to keep a reader turning the pages, but there's more to the novel than suspense. On one hand, "Before the Fall" is a complex, compulsively readable thrill ride of a novel. On the other, it is an exploration of the human condition, a meditation on the vagaries of human nature, the dark side of celebrity, the nature of art, the power of hope and the danger of an unchecked media. The combination is a potent, gritty thriller that exposes the high cost of news as entertainment and the randomness of fate. KRISTIN HANNAH is the author, most recently, of "The Nightingale."