Lowell Hawthorne is a depressed thirtysomething struggling with two young children, a divorce and a lingering sense of terror after his mother was killed by Muslim terrorists in a plane hijacking when he was 16. None of this is helped by a suspicion that his late father, a spy, knew more about the attack than he let on.

Samantha Raleigh was on the flight herself, a terrified infant who escaped as her parents were murdered. Now a student, she contacts Lowell in an attempt to uncover the real circumstances of the deaths.

This novel is unmistakably of our time in its focus on private lives distorted by public events. The problem is that Turner Hospital often struggles to map one on to the other in a convincing fashion.

KATHERINE HADDON