DUE PREPARATIONS FOR THE PLAGUE

This literary thriller emanates from a fictional historical event, the 1987 hijacking of Air France Flight 64 and its subsequent explosion with hundreds of passengers on board. Written in the wake of 9/11, Hospital's imaginative, frightening work is deeply informed by it, conveying in her fiction a jitteriness that feels familiar, as well as the murkiness of terror networks that betray no more solidity than liquid. The protagonists here are two survivors of the act of terror, which, years later, still haunts, obsesses, and imperils them. Sean Mangan is generally a competent reader, effectively adapting to Hospital's varying pacing and changes in points of view. Occasionally, he lapses into artificial accents but, for the most part, is true to the intensity of this disturbing novel. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB/ MAR 05]