''Night Fall'' is a 2004 novel by American author
Nelson DeMille
Nelson Richard DeMille (born August 23, 1943) is an American author of action adventure and suspense novels. His novels include '' Plum Island'', '' The Charm School'', and '' The Gold Coast''. DeMille has also written under the pen names Jack ...
.
Plot
The story begins with the 1996 crash of
TWA Flight 800 off
Long Island
Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...
,
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
. A couple conducting an illicit affair on the beach witness the crash and flee the scene, having accidentally videotaped the crash and what appears to be a missile rising from the ocean towards the plane.
Five years later, Anti-Terrorist Task Force (ATTF, a fictional
FBI department based on the
Joint Terrorism Task Force) detective
John Corey is encouraged to reinvestigate the crash, officially blamed on mechanical failure, by his wife Kate Mayfield, who had worked on the original investigation.
The story is a sequel to ''
The Lion's Game
''The Lion's Game'' is a 2000 novel by American author Nelson DeMille. It is the second of DeMille's novels to feature the detective John Corey, now working as a contractor for the fictional FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force in New York City. The 20 ...
'' and reintroduces a number of characters from that novel. A sequel to ''Night Fall'', titled ''
Wild Fire'', was released on November 6, 2006. One of the returning characters from "The Lion's Game" and "Plum Island" is CIA operative Ted Nash, whom DeMille has developed into Corey's antagonist and nemesis in his career with the ATTF.
Much of the action in the novel centers on the search for the couple who inadvertently videotaped the in-air explosion that brought down TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island. At the center of Corey's investigation are witness statements claiming that the fatal explosion was caused by a missile and not by mechanical failure.
Corey is warned by his superiors not to look into the TWA crash, and he and his wife are temporarily assigned to anti-terrorist activities in
Yemen and
Tanzania to keep them from pursuing the case. They return to the U.S., however, in early September 2001, and Corey makes crucial discoveries which are quickly overshadowed by the tragic events of
Sept. 11, 2001
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...
.
''Night Fall'' debuted as number one on the
''New York Times'' Best Seller List on December 12, 2004, and remained on the list for 11 weeks.
The New York Times Best Seller List, February 20, 2005.
Retrieved February 5, 2009.
References
External links
Night Fall on Nelson DeMille's Official Website
{{Nelson DeMille
2004 American novels
Novels by Nelson DeMille
Novels set in Long Island
TWA Flight 800