Due Preparations for the Plague: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A Hidden Gem
Review: A serious and emotional novel, with intelligent narrative.
This is the thinking person's spy novel. It's realistic and
exciting, but also packs a strong emotional punch. Events in this novel sweep like a machette through the characters' lives and unforgivingly shatter their worlds. Less than 15 pages into the novel I started to weep, I think more from shock at how much this novel was able to engage me so immediately.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant & Literary Psychological Thriller For Our Times
Review: Albert Camus wrote, "There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise." "Due Preparations For The Plague" centers on an incident as terrible as a war or plague, and as surprising, for hundreds of people. A terrorist group, The Black Death, hijacked Air France Flight 64 to New York in September, 1987. During the five day period of negotiations between the terrorists and various governments' officials, the children on the plane were released and held in safety, waiting for the inevitable outcome, and longing for their parents' safe return. The reunion never took place and all remaining passengers met a horrific death. Thanks to the miracle of TV, the children were exposed to it all in living color. Needless to say, they were scarred for life by the events of this period, as they would have been marked by the scars of a terrible plague or a war.

Many of these surviving children have stayed in touch with each other over the years, seeking emotional support and comfort. They maintain a website on which they request information concerning the doomed flight, even though much of the information is classified. They all suffer psychological traumas and an obsession with the tragedy. Two of the survivors in particular, Samantha and Lowell, attempt to piece together the events leading up to the hijacking. As they do so, many of the key passengers' stories are revealed. Espionage, politics, betrayal, and love affairs all play their part in the convoluted web of Flight 64 and its demise. It is a web that links together, forever, the passengers and their families.

Janette Turner Hospital explores a terrorist incident, government cover-ups, the moral implications of collateral damage when weighed against "the good of the nation," and the dangers involved when choosing the lesser of many evils. The novel is filled with believable clandestine plots and double-crosses. The narrative spirals back and forward in time, disorienting the reader, as the characters are disoriented, weaving past and present together in the search for the truth.

Ms. Turner Hospital illustrates her storyline with highly effective historical and literary allusions, quoting Daniel Defoe, Albert Camus, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, the Book of Job, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare, among others. She is a writer of consummate craft and writes with a lyrical style and intensity that bring acts of terrible cruelty, as well as those of great love and courage, to the reader's doorstep. She asks how one prepares for death. And how does one live with survival?

"Due Preparations For The Plague" is an extraordinary psychological thriller...and more. One of the characters muses at the novel's end, "How do we ready ourselves for what might happen tomorrow? What possible preparations can be made?" In the days, months and years following September 11, 2001, this entire theme is horrifyingly relevant.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant & Literary Psychological Thriller For Our Times
Review: Albert Camus wrote, "There have been as many plagues as wars in history, yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise." "Due Preparations For The Plague" centers on an incident as terrible as a war or plague, and as surprising, for hundreds of people. A terrorist group, The Black Death, hijacked Air France Flight 64 to New York in September, 1987. During the five day period of negotiations between the terrorists and various governments' officials, the children on the plane were released and held in safety, waiting for the inevitable outcome, and longing for their parents' safe return. The reunion never took place and all remaining passengers met a horrific death. Thanks to the miracle of TV, the children were exposed to it all in living color. Needless to say, they were scarred for life by the events of this period, as they would have been marked by the scars of a terrible plague or a war.

Many of these surviving children have stayed in touch with each other over the years, seeking emotional support and comfort. They maintain a website on which they request information concerning the doomed flight, even though much of the information is classified. They all suffer psychological traumas and an obsession with the tragedy. Two of the survivors in particular, Samantha and Lowell, attempt to piece together the events leading up to the hijacking. As they do so, many of the key passengers' stories are revealed. Espionage, politics, betrayal, and love affairs all play their part in the convoluted web of Flight 64 and its demise. It is a web that links together, forever, the passengers and their families.

Janette Turner Hospital explores a terrorist incident, government cover-ups, the moral implications of collateral damage when weighed against "the good of the nation," and the dangers involved when choosing the lesser of many evils. The novel is filled with believable clandestine plots and double-crosses. The narrative spirals back and forward in time, disorienting the reader, as the characters are disoriented, weaving past and present together in the search for the truth.

Ms. Turner Hospital illustrates her storyline with highly effective historical and literary allusions, quoting Daniel Defoe, Albert Camus, Robert Browning, Lewis Carroll, Jorge Luis Borges, the Book of Job, Boccaccio, and Shakespeare, among others. She is a writer of consummate craft and writes with a lyrical style and intensity that bring acts of terrible cruelty, as well as those of great love and courage, to the reader's doorstep. She asks how one prepares for death. And how does one live with survival?

"Due Preparations For The Plague" is an extraordinary psychological thriller...and more. One of the characters muses at the novel's end, "How do we ready ourselves for what might happen tomorrow? What possible preparations can be made?" In the days, months and years following September 11, 2001, this entire theme is horrifyingly relevant.
JANA

Rating:
Summary: Prelude to 9/11
Review: Due Preparations for the Plague gets most of its impact from the tragedies of terrorist acts, such as Pan Am flight 103 and most of all 9/11. Further interest is drawn from our knowledge that the U.S. government, and specifically the CIA, has been involved in covert plots around the world that have ultimately been detrimental to the country's best interests.

Terrorism is today's modern plague and as Camus warned, we must be ever vigilant. Are you concerned that part of this vigilence includes keeping careful watch on the CIA? Do you believe that the U.S. government is capable of making deals with the enemy that may include some domestic collateral damage? Does the government sometimes believe that the ends justify the means? If you answered yes to these questions, then this book is for you.

DPftP also delves into the innermost thoughts of victims and survivors but it's a bit erratic in this area. Lowell's clunky, hard-to-believe actions early in the book when he is presented with evidence to solve 13 years of uncertainty, give way to a smoother, more convincing and gripping story.

The plot is tricky to follow with action continually jumping back and forth from 1987 to 2000/2001 and the inclusion some interesting relationships between the characters. It's made more complicated by male nicknames for many of the female characters.

Factual details of chemical warfare, voyeuristic death scenes and survivor's guilt make for some disturbing reading but if this type of subject matter fascinates you, make due preparations for spending time with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Fine "Literary Thriller"
Review: Hospital has done a fine job grasping hold of this reader and not letting him go. There were a few aspects I didn't like -- all those quotations from other authors -- Camus, Defoe, Borges, etc. -- at the start of sections (Why do academics and literary types like to do this? Do they hope to bask in reflected glory?)And there was some awkward "fine writing" that broke the illusion and deflected from the story and exploration of the characters. But the story is powerful and the story-telling quite strong. Once involved, it was hard to put this book down. If you crave good writing applied to a strong plot, you will definitely like this novel.

Rating:
Summary: Innocence betrayed in the pursuit of truth¿
Review: I was unprepared for the impact of this riveting novel, defined by psychological tensions and a complicated plot, which presents a deceptively simple story. A number of young children are released from a hijacked Air France flight, although their parents meet a horrible death at the hands of terrorists, the children's lives forever tainted by what they have witnessed. But there is a subplot that implicates the government, notably the CIA, in the manipulation of information that led to the deaths of those on the flight. Over the years, the surviving children keep in close contact, desperately seeking emotional connections. They create a web site, where they request any information regarding the Air France hijacking incident.

Of the surviving children, Samantha is the most driven, unable to cease her relentless quest for answers. None of the children have attained normalcy, the devastation of early trauma marking each facet of their lives. Samantha has been phoning Lowell continuously, in search of yet another detail, as he lost his mother in the tragedy, but was not on the plane. Lowell, an ineffectual husband and father, tormented by nightmares, is the son of a suspected CIA operative in charge of Operation Black Death, code-named Salamander. Lowell is unaware of his father's part in the government cover-up, having spent years believing himself a disappointment to an emotionally distant father. But when Lowell receives a package from his father, recently killed in a car accident, the contents change his perspective and raise serious questions of personal responsibility.

When Lowell finally contacts Samantha, he is in a panic, afraid he is pursued because of the material now in his possession. Unsure whether they are paranoid about the surveillance, Samantha and Lowell secretly meet to review Lowell's contraband, faced with a difficult decision, balancing the explosive information and their desire for survival. There are a number of inexplicable coincidences, people who have known each other in distant places and circumstances brought together on the fateful flight. Both Sam and Lowell discover that some of their relatives are associated with the puzzle, although only tangentially.

Due Preparations for the Plague is a bold examination of an incident of terrorism and the subsequent obfuscation of facts by the CIA. The unacknowledged, clandestine operations of a government engaged in a different kind of war, deliberately invisible, albeit just as deadly, exists after all, unremarked by most. When evil is perpetrated in pursuit of power, there are those who seek to contain that evil, to balance the potential for destruction. But history is rife with examples of failure. In consorting with the worst of mankind, contamination by association is inevitable, small surrenders that deplete good intentions, until there is only the lesser evil and a decision to sustain collateral damage is made by the few for the many.

Yet there is redemption for Sam and Lowell, the intensley personal perspective of those that perished, as, unified, they oppose their tormentor with inordinate bravery. The author graphically illustrates the nature of the human spirit, transcending circumstances, transforming victims from pawns to examples of life at its most magnificent. In the most extreme circumstances, the human spirit demands an intimate communion with others, its pure flame annihilating differences. In a message of love and forgiveness, the dead send hope to future generations, survivors of indignity and shame that lift their faces, uncowed, to the light. "To state quite simply what we learn in a time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise". (Albert Camus, THE PLAGUE). Luan Gaines/2003.

Rating:
Summary: More preparations required.
Review: In 1987 the CIA enlists an Arab agent provocateur to mastermind an airplane hijacking. CIA Objective: to penetrate and destroy a terrorist cell. Arab Result: 400 odd passenger casualties, & one jumbo jet blown up on the ground at Tikrit, Iraq. Score that 400 points for the terrorists, zero for the CIA.
This timely novel consists of 8 books, each of which in turn holds 5 to 8 parts. The convoluted structure swaps back and forth between 1987 and 2001, as multiple narrators carry the plot along ever decreasing spirals folding in on each other to a final disappointing emptiness.
The author appears to be multilingual, with French appearing throughout. I look forward to the first English novelist adventurous enough to include conversations in Arabic (or some other non-Latin script) in their work.
Although I found this novel both entertaining and literate - it is scattered with allusions to works of high literature, I also found it ultimately unsatisfying and marred by assorted small irritations. Considering the author is another Australian, like myself, allbeit now domiciled in the United States, I regret I am descending into the role of the eternal antipodean carper.
Did it not occur to any of the proof-readers that:
1. "gasoline" pumps are not used to refuel jumbo jets - their engines run on a mixture of kerosene and aviation fuel,
2. plane tickets carry the name of the passenger and identify the flight code: given only the name of a passenger booked in advance it should be straightforward for law enforcement agencies to trace the flight involved. How in such circumstances the to-be-hijacked plane with a daughter/wife/or mother of the CIA on board ever got off the ground in the first place beggars belief.
3. Is there a word "fractally", was it invented by the author, and is it an adverb or an adjective derived from fractal ? Does "fractally expressed" mean anything, or would "modelled with fractals" be a more sensible construction ?
4. Echelon is not mentioned. E-mail crops up once from memory.
I could go on, but not all the technical details clothing this story will convince Clancy readers (who might not be attracted to the underlying theme of this work anyway - Le Carre perhaps).
Some stylistic aspects of the writing also jar. Not everyone in the world is a North American. Why must an Australian working in the US resort to US spelling: woolen vs woollen ? Or why must a Francophone Australian author use maneuver for manoeuvre (except presumably when they switch into French dialogue) ?
In my opinion the book is at least a hundred pages too short, especially as regards the Decameron sequences. I am not sure the length of the Decameron text can be thought to correspond to 5 or 6 videotapes. The denouement is somewhat abrupt and intentionally leaves several threads unresolved, unfairly to my mind, although perhaps the author intends to give the reader liberty to use their own imagination.

On the plus side:
The author obviously has the sensibility of some of the better known intellectuals: "The true facts must be erased from history" (Noam Chomsky)
The French secret service bombed the Rainbow Warrior (but only killed the one Dutch cook I think, singular not plural as the author misapprehends), thanks for bringing this up, the French need to be reminded of their own record as much as possible.
There are puppets and there are strings, there are even puppets holding strings to other puppets. This book is spooky in many ways, one of which is the relationship it exploits or invents between the CIA, the oil industry, and Saddam Hussein's 1987 Iraq.
The book has shades of Colonel Oliver North meets Oliver Stone, and together they concoct a plot for the latter's next Hollywood feature.
There's also a sort of multi-faceted premonition in this book: over the question of the missing masterminds of the Nord-Ost Theatre incident in Moscow; the use of gas; and the evident willingness of the authorities to kill captives and captors simultaneously.

I don't think I share the author's perspective on the theme of due preparations. There is a real plague out there. To my way of thinking when something like 15,000 people per day are dying of AIDS, day in day out 365 days a year (last year 9,000 a day, next year 20,000 a day ?), terrorism is a relatively minor problem, and is off my personal radar. Statistically speaking, the chances of the average Westerner being blown up, hijacked, gassed, or infected with anthrax pale into comparative insignificance in the face of the 30% HIV infection rates among adults in parts of Africa.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Janette Hospital is my favorite author. Her best books are 'Borderline' and 'Charades'. 'Oyster' is too hard to read. 'Due Preparations...' just does not astound like her early books do. Seems knocked off just to satisfy a book contract or something and is not from the heart. Still my favorite author though.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Janette Hospital is my favorite author. Her best books are 'Borderline' and 'Charades'. 'Oyster' is too hard to read. 'Due Preparations...' just does not astound like her early books do. Seems knocked off just to satisfy a book contract or something and is not from the heart. Still my favorite author though.

Rating:
Summary: Not Your Usual International Thriller
Review: Rather than repeat what has been written by others on this page, I'd only like to add that normally this book is not my usual cup of tea. I burnt out on the genre back in the 70's, and haven't felt the need to return to it. The front page of the newspaper has all the international intrigue I can handle. But this wonderful book , with its indepth psychological insights and interwoven histories, had me wishing I could call in to work so I could keep reading. It was given to me by someone whose taste I admire, so under his recommendation I gave it a shot. If it's possible, each section should be read (as all short stories should) in one sitting. The continuity and suspense are masterfully handled. Of particular interest is the reader's guide that follows the text which sheds illumination on the most potent section in the book.