The Flight Attendant, by Chris Bohjalian (2018)
The novel begins when Cassie Bowden, a flight attendant in her light 30s, awoke in a strange hotel room in Dubai next to the bloody body of Alex Sokolov. Cassie was a binge drinker who experienced frequent black-outs whenever she drank. Upon seeing the dead Alex, she briefly wondered whether or not she killed him during one of her black-outs. She tried to recall the events of the previous evening, but remembered only that she had dinner with Alex and returned with him to his hotel instead of the hotel where the other flight attendants were housed. She vaguely recalled that a woman named Miranda joined them briefly in Alex’s hotel room.
Instead of contacting the authorities, she quickly dressed and returned to her hotel, discarding any potential evidence of the night along the way. Upon joining her flight crew, she began her series of lies. Alex had been on the flight from New York to Dubai, which is where Cassie first met him. By the time the return flight arrived in New York, his body had been discovered, and because Alex was an American, the FBI wanted to interview the crew members on his original flight.
Cassie realized that she could be in legal trouble so contacts a lawyer recommended by the flight crew’s union. When interviewed by the FBI, Cassie blurted out that she had spent the night with Alex, but lied saying that he had been alive when she left his room.
Alex was a hedge fund manager, with ties to Russia. Could there be more to his story that Cassie knew? Why was the FBI so interested in Alex? And what of Miranda? What was her relationship with Alex?
This was a very quick read and entertaining until the last couple of chapters. The novel then went off the rails with a very bizarre ending that seemed to come out of nowhere.
Read: August 15, 2018
3.5 Stars
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