Product Description

1939. The world's most luxurious airliner is heading straight into a storm of international intrigue, violence, war, and betrayal...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #155166 in Books
• Published on: 1992-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 526 pages

From Publishers Weekly
The opulent interior of the first airliner, the Pan American Clipper, on a transatlantic flight from Southampton, England, to New York in war-darkened 1939, is the setting for Follett's high-flying caper, guaranteed to hold the reader in his seat. Recalling a time when air travel was an exotic adventure, master of epic suspense Follett ( Pillars of the Earth ) spins an excruciatingly taut drama on the aerial equivalent of the Orient Express. Persons unknown kidnap the wife of Clipper engineer Eddie Deakin from their home in Maine in order to force Deakin to maneuver an emergency landing in the choppy waters off Bangor. Apparently the shadowy conspirators plan to remove one of the passengers, an intriguing group who include an FBI agent transporting an extradited mafioso; a Russian princess; a British industrialist chasing his wife and her lover; an American movie star; an Oswald Mosely-like aristocrat turned fascist, his daughter and her lover, a young jewel thief. Details of early aviation firmly establish the cast in their era and a tantalizing mosaic of subplots whisks the reader through a whirlwind of romance and intrigue. Follet soars to a thoroughly satisfying ending with aeronautical precision. This is his best since The Eye of the Needle. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Follett's early thriller, reminiscent of the 1950s' classic THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY, follows a plane load of passengers traveling thirty hours from England to the U.S. two days after the start of WWII. The Pan American Clipper is packed with a whole cast of characters, including a scientist fleeing the Nazis, a Mafioso being transported back to justice by an FBI agent, a movie star, a thief, a princess, and a Fascist . To complicate matters, one of the crew's family members is kidnapped to force the flyer to orchestrate an emergency landing. Tom Casaletto's glib performance makes this seemingly endless journey fly by with ease. His many accents are first-rate and more than make up for his tendency to pause unexpectedly in the middle of a sentence. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews
With the Dark Ages (The Pillars of the Earth, 1989) out of his system, Ken Follett returns to the spies, sex, and Nazis that did so well for him in Eye of the Needle. Fascinated by the huge flying boats launched by Pan Am in the late 1930's to fly the north Atlantic route, Follett has cooked up a sort of Airship of Fools or Flying Grand Hotel about a Clipper load of rich folks and lowlifes fleeing England after the declaration of war. The passengers include a fascist marquess and his family--so much like the Mitfords as to include a Nazi daughter and her socialist sister; a cuckolded industrialist chasing his pretty wife; an aging movie star; a Jewish refugee physicist; a suspected mafioso; a rich, powerful, but unloved American widow; the widow's weak, treacherous brother; and the handsome young jewel-thief without whom no such epic is complete. The danger that hangs over all these worthies is sabotage of the flight plan by an otherwise trustworthy flight engineer whose wife is being held captive in Maine by nameless rotten scoundrels. The merciless kidnappers want the plane set down early in order to remove a nameless someone before it reaches New York. Since the plane flies rather slowly and since there are three refueling stops, and since the beds make up into comfortable little berths, there is plenty of time for the passengers to search for the marchioness's priceless rubies, counterplot against the bad guys, stretch the legs in Irish pubs, quarrel, have reconciliations and indulge in a fair amount of good, healthy sex. No technothrills. No psychodrama. No fine writing. Hours of good storytelling. (Book-of-the-Month Split Main Selection for November) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Flight full of intrigue
A story of romance,intrigue and espionage takes place over the Atlantic on the Pan American Clipper at the onset of WWII. Follett's mixture of characters are wonderful; everything from aristocrats to theives and spies on this flight. People from all walks of life taking this flight for all different reasons. A darn good yarn and as a bonus I learned something about the Pan American Clipper; an amazing engineering feat in itself.

Quite a Suspenseful Flight...Follett is a Master!
Having finished Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, I rediscovered Follett after having read Eye of the Needle eons ago. Night Over Water is as well constructed a story as you'll find. He introduces the cast of characters so well, that when the flight commences and the personalities meet, the mystery and spice pull you in. Tighten your seat belt, this one is going to be a turbulent good read. Enjoy!

Couldn't put this book down
As usual another great story told by Ken Follett. This book takes you back to 1939 in pre-war times in England. It it about several different families and lives that come together on the Pan-Am Clipper. The story is beautifully told from many different points of view. I like the was he would end one chapter with one persons point of view, and then resume the other chapter going a few minutes back in time and telling it from someone else's point of view. I loved this book. Thanks Ken Follett for another wonderful novel.