Fly Me

April 24, 2017
Flying the friendly skies in the 1970s was definitely an adventure, what with all those skyjackings, as Riley demonstrates in his first novel. Suzy Whitman is a stew working out of Sela del Mar, a coastal community near L.A. The year is 1972, and Suzy, upon graduation from Vassar, has impulsively followed in the footsteps of her older sister, Grace, a stewardess with Grand Pacific Airlines whose husband, Mike, is a magazine writer who wants to be the next Tom Wolfe. Riley employs a Wolfean methodology in bringing to life the stoner vibe of the time through curated period details, marred by some anachronisms. While skateboarding on the 4th of July, Suzy meets Billy Zar, a local weed dealer, who tricks her into using her position with the airline to smuggle harder stuff for him. A family health crisis forces Suzy into a life of crime that, in the end, leaves her with only one desperate way out. Throw in Jim Jones’s nascent religious cult and a backstory involving Scientology, and the result is an overstuffed novel that reads like the fictional equivalent of Brendan I. Koerner’s study of the ’70s skyjacking phenomenon, The Skies Belong to Us.

April 1, 2017
Suzy is a stewardess, a skateboarder, a race car driver, a Vassar graduate...and now a drug mule.It's 1972 in the California beach town of Sela del Mar, where the favorite bumper sticker is "Sela vie" and most roads end at the beach. Close enough to LAX to see the lights of the planes, the village is home to many a houseful of "stews," as they were called back then. Among them are Grace and Suzy Whitman, good-looking sisters from upstate New York who now work for Grand Pacific airlines, and aspiring magazine journalist Mike Singer, Grace's secret husband (among many draconian regulations, stews were not allowed to marry). The first friend Suzy makes in her new town is a blond local named Billy Zar. "What do you do?" she asks. "I'm a pawn in a multinational outfit that specializes in drug running," he replies. He's not kidding, Suzy learns, when she finds a flour sack filled with contraband in her carry-on on her next flight to New York, along with instructions for its delivery. Suzy is no weenie--she drove race cars in high school and is about to start taking flying lessons. She also has a family crisis that could benefit from an infusion of cash. So one bad choice leads to another and finally to a wildly unforeseen resolution in which debut novelist Riley drives his fuel-injected plot right into the bleachers. Riley has conjured up impeccable West Coast period atmosphere--salt air, cocaine, Vuarnets--but despite his relentless commitment to depicting his stewardess's inner life, she's more a fantasy than a real character.

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2017

Suzy Whitman was a born risk taker. This trait, nurtured by her dad with his love of fast cars, led Suzy from building go-karts at the age of ten to racing the junior circuit at Watkins Glen, NY. Unlike her prettier but aimless older sister, Grace, Suzy excelled in school. While Grace became an airline stewardess, Suzy sailed through her first three years as an English major at Vassar. On the strength of that success, she was selected to complete her senior year at Yale, where she fell short for the first time by failing required science courses. Shocked and feeling defeated, Suzy follows the newly married Grace across the country to the beach town of Sela del Mar, CA, and joins Grace's airline as a stewardess. The year is 1972, and Sela del Mar, a haven for drifters living loosely on the fringes, offers a heady, endless summer of music, alcohol, and drugs. Open to new experiences and adventure, Suzy flirts with danger and falls into a drug courier role. What starts as a lark turns serious when her adored father cannot afford the cancer treatment that could save his life. VERDICT Like some commercial airline trips, this first novel rambles along on the runway, finally takes off with a blast, detours a bit here and there, but proves to be a stimulating ride.--Sheila M. Riley, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2017
Riley's suspenseful first novel unfolds in Southern California, 1972, in a laid-back community where stewardesses play beach volleyball with drug dealers. The stew at the center of the novel is Suzy, a skateboarder, race-car driver, and aspiring writer from upstate New York. At odds after graduating from Vassar, Suzy follows her free-spirited sister into stewardess school and then onto the planes that crisscross the country, frequently hijacked and occasionally crashing. To save her father, whose only chance of recovery from cancer is an expensive procedure, she begins trafficking in drugs and soon finds herself in over her head. Riley strongly evokes the setting, taking Suzy to a precisely described Rose Bowl or a Rolling Stones concert, but he also relies on references to Thomas Pynchon or Susan Sontag to convince readers of the seriousness of what is an otherwise entertaining, lightweight thriller. Though major characters are relatively undeveloped, the plot often hinges on coincidence, and several threads are introduced only to be abandoned, the novel builds to a surprising and nerve-racking climax.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)