It’s been almost two months since I started reading
Sidney Sheldon’s novel The Sky is Falling. After countless interruptions due to acads and org stuff and plain amnesia (I had accidentally hidden it in my drawer), I finally finished reading it this morning.

It was my first Sheldon book – or should I say, my first adopted Sheldon book – for I just found it in my room and none of my housemates claimed ownership (maybe its owner had been a former occupant of our boarding house, who perhaps also had amnesia). Noticing Sheldon’s simply-constructed sentences and the protagonist’s profession, I decided to give the book a try.

It is the story of Dana Evans, a broadcast journalist who has just come home in Washington D.C. after a reporting stint in war-torn Sarajevo. Now she struggles with the war-free, normal day’s worries, which includes Kemal, the orphaned Serbian boy whom she brought to America.

Then a terrible thing happens to America’s greatest philanthropists: the whole Winthrop family dies in separate “accidents” in less than a year. Suspicious about everything to have just been an “accident”, Dana begins to investigate the tragedies that could possibly be murder. Soon she finds herself traveling – to Alaska, Colorado, France, Belgium, Italy, and Russia – going ever nearer to the explosive truth…and what may also be her fateful end.

Plotwise, Sheldon proves to be a master of thrills. He makes a long, meandering investigation flavored with danger, romance, and drama. As Dana goes from place to place, gathering increasingly interesting clues and gradually sensing watchful eyes following her, she worries whether or not sweet-at-home-delinquent-at-school Kemal is now getting along well with his gazillionth housekeeper Mrs. Daley, and whether or not her fiancé Jeff Connors is making love with his cancer-sick supermodel ex-wife Rachel, whom he is temporarily taking care of. Sheldon makes use of endearing characters and matters of the heart to keep, if concentrated upon, what seems to be one-notch-lower-than-gripping series of interviews interesting.

Certainly the ultimate twist is worth the wait. With everything (and everyone) now coming to light, the climax is nothing short of shocking and disturbing. The big problem turns out to be actually a very big problem that concerns not just people within Dana’s quest for truth behind the Winthrops’ demise, but the whole human race as well.

The plight of the innocent sandwiched by war and the threat posed by nuclear weapons are the indirect emphasis of the story. Besides the fact that it all happens in frigid mid-December, the atmosphere throughout the book is dark as its cover. The Winthrops’ tragic end, Rachel’s bout with breast cancer, Kemal’s expulsion and humiliation, Dana and Jeff’s slowly-ebbing romance, the lives lost that Dana’s investigation entails…

Though there are some holes that are not filled in at the end, Sheldon still ends up being the expert of suspense that he is. His simplicity, wit, and cunning just make me want to read another of his works, given the time, of course.