Lost in the Blue Room

 Author's Summary

America's-most-wanted-novel-that-nobody-wants holds one thousand passengers hostage 35,000 feet over the Atlantic and becomes the greatest bestseller of all time. Would the Twin Towers still be standing if federal air marshals were flying on September 11, 2001? Ex-sky marshal Jack King thinks so, and he's about to make the government and airlines pay for gross negligence. Armed with a top-secret gun-cloaking device, he hijacks a new blended-wing airliner and demands that the passengers take a journey with him back to 1970 when the original sky marshals flew. Andrea High flies first class for a living, compliments of the besieged airlines. Andrea is a college professor, a plastic surgeon, a Buddhist monk, or anyone that fits a sky marshal's cover story, except, of course, a sleeping passenger. To survive boring hours of wakefulness, waiting for a skyjacker to strike, Andrea writes a journal and challenges the woman of his present with the man of her past. Highly addicted to the anonymity of the job, Andrea explores drugs, violence, and sex, loses sight of the destination, and turns the story into a terrorism of obscurity--the very thing the passengers are helpless to destroy.

MWSA Review

More realities circling in tandem then a stack above LAX International. If you love philosophy, guns, sex and flights of imagination, then follow Richard Barone down the rabbit hole and into the Blue Room. You'll find him in there, lost in existential angst.

One of my favorite words is perturbation. Barone uses it and knows what it means. In fact, Lost in the Blue Room weaves past and future possibilities into a tapestry of extrapolations only a government agent, hashish smoking, deadheading airline marshall with too many hours at 35,000 feet can imagine. That much time and intellect will have anyone agitated, not to mention foot high lovers with a penchant for chaos.

Let’s be honest, you won’t remember all the details, there are way too many unless you are compulsive enough to re-read once or twice, but there is no way to forget this read either. It will live in your memory and blossom into a flavor and brew uniquely your own. What a lovely gift beyond the read itself!

Reviewed by: Carmen Stenholm (2011)