Filled with turbulence and sudden plunges in altitude, The Flight Attendant is a very rare thriller whose penultimate chapter made me think to myself, 'I didn’t see that coming.' The novel — Bohjalian’s 20th — is also enhanced by his deftness in sketching out vivid characters and locales and by his obvious research into the realities of airline work ... The Flight Attendant is the ultimate airplane book, and not just because of its name: entertaining and filled with inside info on the less glamorous aspect of flight crew’s lives, it may even make you more politely attentive the next time you’re asked to listen to that in-flight lecture on emergency water landings.
Mr. Bohjalian twists the tension tight and keeps the surprises startling. For a good half of The Flight Attendant, the reader is rooting for the story’s dubious protagonist. But Cassie in peril, like Cassie pre-Dubai, refuses to toe the line, ignoring the advice and disobeying the instructions of those trying to help. It’s a bit hard to maintain sympathy for a character so perversely inclined to remain, in the words of one deadly pursuer, 'either a wild card or something far worse.'
He’s back-loaded the story with twists, from ones that were hinted at early to left-field surprises. And the brisk and busy ending is a fireworks show of redemption, revelation and old-fashioned gunplay. That knack for speedy narrative can be a fault at times: Scenes from the assassin’s perspective are relatively underdrawn, and for all the globetrotting the characters do, from New York to Dubai to Rome, there’s little vivid scenery to take in. But Bohjalian clears room in this no-nonsense narrative for moments of humor and sensitivity. He’s done his homework on the lives of flight attendants, and the abuse and absurdity they often face ... In that regard, it’s an assured novel about reckoning not just with some ruthless bad guys, but private sadness as well.
I woke up in a hotel room really far away from here, and the man beside me was dead.' That tidily sums up the hard-to-put-down novel from Chris Bohjalian, who gives us a murder, a hard-drinking heroine and a fascinating look inside a career that is not as glamorous as depicted back in the day ... The beauty of the book is that, along with the politics of the plot, [protagonist] Cassie’s humanity comes through ... No spoiler alert, but the last 100 or so pages of The Flight Attendant turn tense as you try to follow the unexpected but believable surprises Bohjalian has in store and answers whether Cassie can find salvation of sorts after that night in the Dubai hotel room.
Bohjalian is an unfaltering storyteller who crosses genres with fluidity, from historical fiction to literary thrillers. He is also that rare male writer who has mastered the female point of view with adroit credibility ... Bohjalian revisits the notion of what happens when an individual loses control of his or her environment in a read-in-one-sitting escapade that is as intellectually satisfying as it is emotionally entertaining.
Bohjalian’s less successful in avoiding clichés or in making an espionage subplot plausible. Then, with about 50 pages to go it’s as though the bell has rung for the final lap, with the author unceremoniously detonating a plot bombshell that triggers the frenetic, exciting, but not especially convincing sprint to the finish. Bohjalian’s fans will still have fun.
Although Bohjalian (The Sleepwalker, 2017, etc.) strives to render Cassie sympathetic, at times he can’t resist taking a judgmental stance toward her. As Cassie’s addiction becomes the primary focus, the intricate plotting required of an international thriller lags. The moral overcomes the mystery in this sobering cautionary tale.
