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After the Crash

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After the Crash

January 2016

AFTER THE CRASH by Michel Bussi is a novel about a night flight from Istanbul bound for Paris in 1980, where 169 (or is it 168?) passengers were killed as it crashed in the Alps. Yes, this sounds eerily like the horrific mountain crash that we heard about last year. In this book, a three-month-old girl survives. There were two babies on board: one from lesser means and one from a powerful family. Which did the child belong to?

With the book set in the 1980s, Bussi rules out the chance for identification via DNA, which was not practiced for identification at that time.

Already an immediate bestseller in Europe when it was published there, AFTER THE CRASH is a page-turner. With the two families --- one wealthy and one poor --- fighting for custody of the young girl, the case becomes cause célèbre in France, and the mystery gets more and more complicated. As the girl nears her 18th birthday, the private investigator charged with determining her identity discovers a clue that brings danger to the situation.

I confess that I guessed the identity of the baby, but then again my husband jokes that it is never fun to watch a movie with me as often I whisper, “I figured it out!” That said, it did not detract from my enjoyment of the book. I have been recommending it since I read an advance copy months ago. I loved the publishers’ rep, who pitched it to me this way: “Last year there was the girl on the train, and this year there’s the baby on the plane.”

After the Crash
by Michel Bussi