Slipstream

Fives lives intersect at LAX in an explosive climax. As Stephen Hoye reveals the frustrations in the family and work lives of these five people, their normalcy is left behind, and some of their voices get downright creepy. The cast is made up of Wylie, an airport bartender who is about to become a father; his niece, whose lesbian lover has just jilted her and her father who is recently released from prison; and recently fired airplane cleaner Rudy and his wife, Inez, who is plotting to leave him. Hoye captures the thoughts and voices of all the characters with distinction. How they will all meet up is the question in listeners' minds as each individual's drama unfolds. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 13, 2006
Next time you join the throngs of people hurrying through a major airport like LAX, spare a thought for those who work there. That's what Larson's impressively rich, darkly plotted and seriously frightening debut thriller does. That bartender, Wylie, who just poured you a drink to calm your nerves: what's his story? Why does this twitchy Vietnam vet who can "play slide guitar, frame a house, smoke a salmon to perfection" avoid entanglements and spend his working hours serving Dewar's at $6.50 a pop? Why does Wylie getting his ex-con brother, Logan, a job at the airport cause so much trouble? Why can't Rudy, the head of a plane-cleaning crew, tell his wife, Inez, about his being fired? And how is the lesbian love life of Logan's daughter, Jewell, a hard-working architecture student, affected by what happens to Rudy and by Inez's plan to leave her husband? Larson zooms in on these five deceptively ordinary people, showing how their lives intersect and climax in a hail of bullets. Best of all is the way Larson uses LAX to capture the despair and sadness of a city like Los Angeles.