In 1939, with war just declared, a group of privileged people board the most luxurious airliner ever — the Pan American Clipper, bound for New York: an English aristocrat, a German scientist, a murderer under escort, a young wife escaping her husband and a charming, unscrupulous thief. For thirty hours, there is no escape from the flying palace. Over the Atlantic, tension mounts and finally explodes in a dramatic and dangerous climax.
Ken Follett’s view
I have always liked moving vehicle stories, like Murder on the Orient Express or Ship of Fools. I like seeing a group of people get on board and knowing they will work out all their passions, resentments and ambitions in that confined space during the next few days.
I got the idea for Night Over Water when I saw an exhibition about pre-war flying boats in the marine terminal at La Guardia airport. I was captivated by the idea of a plane with an upstairs and downstairs, a dining room, and beds. The idea of having dinner and then going to bed, sleeping all night, and waking up still on the plane, still going over the Atlantic, struck me as terribly romantic.
The Boeing B314 flying boat, known as the Pan Am Clipper, was a wonderful plane, but there are none left. They have all been scrapped, crashed or broken up for parts and I was never able to look at one. I did, nevertheless, get the blueprints and the manuals which detail every nut, bolt and rivet. Thus with Boeing's help, I was able to recreate the plane.
Night Over Water is one of my lighter books. It's as near to playful as I ever get.
Editorial Reviews.
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 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.
Review
Follett is a master. -- Washington Post Book World
His best since Eye of the Needle. -- Publishers Weekly
From the Inside Flap
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About the Author
Ken Follett is the author of numerous international bestsellers, including Jackdaws, Hornet Flight, Code to Zero, Triple, Eye of the Needle, Pillars of the Earth, and A Dangerous Fortune. He lives in England.
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
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