THE 10:12

 

THE 10:12

By Anna Maloney

Harper Perennial

Available in Oct.

299 pgs

 

When reading a modern-day action thriller, the last thing any reader expects to encounter is a middle-age female art teacher cast in the role of an action hero. Claire Fitzroy is on her way home to London from Manchester having bought a ticket on the 10:12 train. She has plenty of things on her mind, to include the possibility that her husband, Jim, is planning to leave her. It occupies her thoughts until, after a few minutes out of the station, a group of ill-prepared, rag-tag men hijack the train. 

Yelling and waving guns around frighteningly, this group of thugs suddenly turns what had begun as a boring train ride into a rolling nightmare for Claire and the other 387 passengers on board. Then, an incredible accident, the average housewife managed to kill one of the terrorists and help tie up a second. Before she can fully come to grips with what she has done, Claire begins to organize those people in her car willing to risk an attempt to retake control of the train. 

What follows is chapter and after chapter of razor edge suspense. We are introduced to Deavy, and ex-soldier who immediately becomes Claire’s partner and several others. As they methodically move up the train, they manage to retake the other cars, either subduing the terrorist on them, or killing them. The battle isn’t without cost and ultimately several of the brave civilians are also slain. Still, by the end of the book’s first half, Claire and her team win out and all the terrorists defeated and captured. 

But our story doesn’t end there. What follows are lots of interviews by the police and eventually a trial. Here Claire and her allies testify, from their personal memories of that awful day, their violent encounters with the hijackers. Every detail is scrutinized by the prosecutor and defense attorneys. Each of the surviving criminals is tried, convicted and sentenced to various British prisons. Through it all, poor Claire finds herself obsessed with understanding exactly why these men, from different backgrounds and occupations, somehow magically came together and planned such a horrendous event. Never mind  that during the hijacking and subsequently on the witness stand, none of them had the same clear-cut goals. It made no logical sense. Claire begins to suspect there are hidden facts known only by certain government agencies that are being withheld from the public. She is determined to uncover what they are and who was actually responsible for the deaths of several innocent souls.

 

Anna Maloney has written a genuine page turner that takes hold of the reader immediately and never once let’s go. The pacing is brutal, the characters, especially the courageous passengers, memorable. In all a decidedly new path taken for what was all too often a familiar and tired mold. Thanks for breaking it, Anna Maloney.