Terminal Event

“Riveting . . . Compelling. . . . This, I suspect, is going to be the best book of the summer.”
—Boston Globe

A commuter airline crashes near Mt. Rainier in Washington State. NTSB investigator Joe Durant is informed of dreadful news: his wife was on the plane. Desperate to find answers for his devastated fifteen-year-old daughter Sarah, Durant rushes to the crash site. He will employ his legendary investigating skills to painstakingly search through the debris, and then attempt to reconstruct the doomed flight.

Durant finds the first clues that the crash wasn’t pilot error or an aircraft maintenance problem. And then the devastating discovery: the plane was brought down by an explosive device.

And when Durant and his NTSB team get close to the culprit, the bomber sends the investigators a taunting “signature,” a fragment of the same kind of metal used in the bomb, something only the bomber would know, and promises to bring down another plane in ten days. Durant races to find the bomber before he can strike again, and it is a dangerous, close-run chase.

“Terminal Event is a gripping page-turner, filled with the kind of fascinating inside information I love. It’s a master class in building suspense through finely-observed detail. The stakes start high and just get higher, building to a climax that's both shocking and deeply satisfying.”
–Joseph Finder

“Gripping. . . . Thayer writes a vivid tale.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Superbly crafted thriller from the prolific Thayer. . . . Thayer piles on fascinating details. . . . Lucid prose and expert pacing keep the excitement high, . . . . A smoothly entertaining return to form after Thayer’s excellent historical pastiche, Man of the Century (1977), that will make airport buyers want to miss their flight.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Descriptions of insider procedures root this nerve-racking thriller in solid realism . . . an engrossing tale that transcends the public tragedy and stands on its own as a mesmerizing story.”
—Publishers Weekly

“This is a fascinating thriller . . . presenting the crash-investigation process in precise detail . . . genuinely engrossing.”
—Booklist

“A great read. . . . A first-rate account of the fascinating investigative efforts of the NTSB.”
—Houston Chronicle

“A book you can’t put down. . . . Combines the diligent and comprehensive homework of Crichton with the imagination and character development of Koontz into a suspenseful page-turner that is also a thoughtful exploration of human psychology and pathology.”
—Winston-Salem Journal

“One book you don’t want to read on a plane. . . . Heart-stopping description of what happens after a plane crash. . . The NTSB ought to give Thayer an award for showing what a tough job its investigators have.”
—The Orlando Sentinel

“Gripping . . . . A page-turner and a fascinatingly well-researched look inside an NTSB crash investigation.” —Pittsburgh Tribune-Review “What a thriller! James Thayer’s Terminal Event manages to captivate us on every page –with fascinating details of an air crash investigation, a pair of complex, wholly appealing protagonists, a dozen unexpected twists, and a plot that speeds from start to finish like a jet plane.”
--Jeffery Deaver