Yellowriter

 Specter of an Accident is set against the backdrop of the crash of Access Air flight 41 from Houston to Pittsburgh on a clear, cold December evening. The main character is an emotionally distraught thirty-two year old man named Alexander LaRae. LaRae is a man whose life is an emotional wreck. He is haunted by the memory of his recently deceased wife, Laura, who succumbed to cervical cancer, leaving Alex to care for their two young daughters. Being in the high stress job as an air traffic controller at the Los Angeles Center in Palmdale, California does not help Alexander’s anxiety level. At the workings of his high school friend, Matt Johnson, who is a soon to be promoted police captain with the Long Beach Police Department, Alex takes a jaunt to his and Matt’s old high school stomping ground. Matt has set up his ex-wife, Jill Murray, and Alex for a little meeting 14 years after the three of them had graduated from Carnegie High near Pittsburgh. On the flight to the steel city, Alex meets up with Captain Douglas Rayborn, an older widower pilot two years from retirement and Charlie O’Brien, the good natured jokester, pilot, and unknown to most, an emotional time bomb. Fate has them meeting again and the three of them come across evidence that the accident of flight 41 was no accident at all. The evidence builds and leads to the President himself, allegedly through his head man at the FBI, entering into a deal to turn over a passenger on flight 41. The ill-fated passenger, who was in the government’s Witness Protection Program, had agreed to identify a South American drug lord. The double cross leads to murder and a colossal act of terrorism on U.S. soil. The president and all of his lackeys do an acceptable job of covering up, but one fatal piece of the puzzle, the cockpit voice tape from flight 41, ends up in Charlie’s possession. Amidst a stolen F117 Nighthawk, a hijacked Boeing 767, and numerous attempts on the foursome’s lives, Alex and Jill manage to find love. Or do they? You’ll have to read the book to find out the unpredictable ending. “Specter” is wall to wall excitement peppered with passion. As the last page is reached the reader’s heart will ache as he/she must say goodbye to these new found friends. Specter of an Accident is smart, witty, thought provoking, sad and satisfying.