Joe is roped into helping the great-niece learn the truth of not just what the letter meant, but what mystery lies at its heart. Where was he going? And what drove him to take such a terrible risk? When it’s discovered the great-uncle is carrying a letter sent to him sixty years earlier but which has only just been delivered and that it was sent by his brother who was thought dead after the war (something great-uncle never believed), a train of events is set in motion. Terrified of flying and an octogenarian, he nonetheless boarded a small aircraft in terrible weather with an old pilot friend. These two are thrown together when the anthropologist’s elderly great-uncle dies in a plane crash. This time, Grumley steps away from his almost other-worldly action series and gives the readers what is an unashamedly Indiana Jones type mystery involving an air-traffic inspector, Joe Rickards, with a sad secret, and a young female academic, an anthropologist, who also bears a heavy burden. I bought it straight away and read it swiftly. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed his Breakthrough series, which is imaginative, bold and well-written, I was so excited to see another Grumley book published. Sent by someone who should have already been long dead.Ī single letter, Joe Rickards is about to discover, with a secret that will change the entire world. Beginning with how a mysterious letter could turn up after being lost in the system for sixty years. Leaving his only hope at understanding it in the hands of the victim's sole remaining relative. With the only surviving relative insisting her grandfather would never have climbed into a small airplane in the first place, even in perfect weather.Ī bizarre string of events culminating in a horrible accident unlike anything Rickards has experienced. Why would a person receive an age-old letter and suddenly disappear into the thick of night.paying to be flown out of a closed airport in the worst possible weather conditions, by a pilot who hadn't had his hand on the stick in years? Each new piece of information only makes the accident more mysterious, and more baffling.

Unlike every other investigation of Joe's career, the facts make no sense.

The details behind this tragedy don't add up. Outside Denver, Colorado, Joe Rickards stands over a small aircraft wreckage, studying burnt remains still smoldering in a field of freshly fallen snow.an investigator for the NTSB, working to carefully roll back the last several hours and identify the cause of the accident. Is about to change the entire human race. Sent from a dark, remote corner of the planet,

Breakthrough michael grumley