Your Emotions Will Soar With T.J. Newman’s Worst Case Scenario

I should have known I’d cry.

When I listened to T.J. Newman’s first book, FALLING, last year, the story evoked an emotional response. The same thing happened when I devoured her second, DROWNING, but this second time, it was doubled. Now, with WORST CASE SCENARIO, she has tripled the emotional impact that a story can bring. 

And I’m so happy for it.

Pitch-Perfect Elevator Pitches

A former flight attendant, Newman’s first two thrillers take place on planes. The elevator pitches are short enough that you could speak them even if you’re going up a single floor. FALLING: A pilot is given a choice: crash the plane or we kill your kidnapped family. DROWNING: How do you rescue survivors trapped in a plane that is slowly sinking in the Pacific Ocean? For WORST CASE SCENARIO (WCS): What do you do if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant?

It’s the kind of situation you hope never, ever happens in real life, but Newman tells this story using characters that you really start caring for from the moment they step into the story.

A Visceral Opening Sequence

As I wrote in my earlier reviews, Newman wastes zero time getting into the action. For WCS, she puts you on the plane when the pilot suffers a fatal heart attack. His body causes the plane to nose dive and nothing can be done. But expert author that she is, Newman puts you on the plane, with the flight attendants and the co-pilot, as they try to right the plane. She makes you care for the almost instantly and you find yourself praying they’ll survive. 

Same thing for the folks on the ground who see and hear the plane crash. The detailed descriptions of what happens to the folks on the ground unfortunate enough to be caught by the falling debris is sobering. What physically happens to a human body when a plane’s wing rams into a van filled with a family? The descriptions are not gory, but they are clinical. You, as the reader, get to fill in the rest. 

Newman excels at writing this type of action scene. You feel it. Your heart beats faster. You might break out in a sweat. But what you’ll be breaking out next is a box of tissues.

Real Characters in a Surreal Situation

So, really, what would happen if a plane crashes into a nuclear power plant? Newman focuses on a few locales and situations to bring home the human element. The crash itself is near Waketa, Minnesota, a small town in proximity to Minneapolis. At her author event here in Houston at Murder by the Book, Newman said she wanted to set the story far away from a big city that would have all the resources and equipment necessary to solve the issues. That decision actually opened up the story and examined what it is like to live in a small town and deepened the character development.

There’s the firefighter who is a single dad/widower with an estranged son.. There’s the team at the power plant who must address the impending catastrophe in less time than they have. There’s the President who must confront the potential worst nuclear incident in the history of the world. And there are the local firefighters who must try and rescue a child on a bridge.

By switching the multiple viewpoints, you get a broad sense of scope of the challenges they all face. But Newman never lets us forget that these are ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and choices. Narrator Joe Morton does a wonderful job at giving these various characters a voice of their own, and the production even went so far as to make things like radio broadcasts sound like they’re coming from a walkie talkie. It’s a little thing, but it goes a long way.

As a human, I became terrified at how easily something like this might happen. As a reader, however, I was enthralled and emotionally engaged throughout the entire book. 

And I will read everything T.J. Newman writes.

You should too.