Noah Hawley is known for authoring some enticing thrillers. His novel Before the Fall is a perfect example of the genre. From transit accidents to FBI investigations to media corruption, the book holds readers' attention without fail. The action begins at the outset of the story with a tragic and mysterious private plane crash. All the passengers and crew die except for two people, one a child. The media works itself and the masses into a hysteria, attempting to figure out why the plane just fell out of the sky. In the end, the police recover the flight recorder and learn that the co-pilot recklessly crashed the plane after the wife of the plane's own, David Bateman, rejects his sexual advances.
Each of the occupants of the plane belongs to America's richest, except for one -- Scott Burroughs, who also happens to be one of the two survivors. He is positioned as a sort of representation of the biblical David among the company of financial Goliaths, not that he is morally exemplary but that he doesn't fit in among these prestigiously affluent people. The media gets ahold of any information they can about Scott's life. His apparent incongruity with the rest of the passengers leads them to become suspicious of Scott's presence on board. Was he having an affair? Was he a criminal? A terrorist? Since the story is so abstract and so little data available, it continues to feed the public appetite for intrigue and suspense. In this position, then, the American public represents the reader; they are in placed in parallel roles in relation to Scott's narrative.
