THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT by Chris Bohjalian

Lately it seems that all novels have a drunken female protagonist.  In this book, Cassie’s drinking is the reason that she’s unsure if she’s responsible for a murder.  She wakes up in a hotel room in Dubai with a corpse whose throat has been slashed.  She does remember most of the previous evening, including a meeting the man had with a woman named Miranda.  Rather than risk being arrested in a foreign country, she flees without notifying anyone about the death and heads back to the States.  She’s smarter than her drinking habits might indicate, though, and retains a good lawyer to help her navigate the FBI investigation that follows.  This novel may be a departure for Bohjalian, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I can’t resist a thriller in the hands of an excellent writer, and he even throws in a nice twist at the end.  I did keep hoping that Cassie would curb her drinking, so that she wouldn’t become the dangerous alcoholic that her father was and so that she would stop making really huge errors of judgment.  As in many novels in which characters want to exonerate themselves of crimes, she does some of her own sleuthing, with an ineptitude that endangers both her safety and her legal case.  I will undoubtedly look at my flight attendants a little differently the next time I board a plane, especially to see if they appear to be hungover.