Before The Fall, Hawley - C +

                                               This is a summer read that starts with a private plane taking off from Martha's Vineyard and plunging into the Atlantic eighteen minutes later. On board is the 56-year-old founder of a news network that sounds like Fox News, and his family. A NYC money manger and a local painter tag along.  The painter survives and saves the son of the newsman. Everyone else perishes. The aftermath focuses on developments that are both indicative of the America we live in and appalling in their banality. The news channel's top on-air personality goes on an emotional binge blaming the crash on ISIS and raising over-the-top insinuations that could be appealing to only tv-addicted morons. The NTSB decides to focus on the painter who saved a four-year-old boy simply because they don't understand him, his life style or how he wound up on the private plane. And in the end, the reason for the crash is flat-out hackneyed. This novel starts out gangbusters and finishes very flat.