I wrote this right after I finished reading your book, but never did anything with it. Since you impersonated one of our cousins and requested a review – here it is.

John wrote a book:  Departures

Based on the preliminary description, I’d have never read this book except that the author is one of my younger brothers.  Thus, I was curious to see just how much of this story was John’s life, how much was John’s fantasy and how much was his imagination.  

John has always been a bit of a braggart.  He has a tendency to make thinly veiled threats “as to what he’d do if he saw one of us siblings he was arguing with”.  This book “lives up to” his bravado.

Brief synopsis:  

The protagonist (Dan) is a commercial pilot; married.  A secondary story goes back to his time as an F16 pilot in Iraq.  His marriage is stagnant – he’s even thinking about divorce when he comes home unexpectedly and finds his wife having sex with a good friend (and Chief Pilot, sort of his boss).  

Dan, distraught ends up at a strip bar, and runs into an amazingly sexy woman who introduces him to a crime boss.  The crime boss seems to have a similar childhood experience (killing his father who murdered his mother) and they work out a deal where Dan works for the crime boss as a hitman; using his pilot position to travel to various cities “without being traced” and in return, the crime boss deals with his wife and friend.

That of course is the biggest hole in the storyline – that since he didn’t have to buy tickets to fly, somehow there would be no connection between Dan and the murders.  Of course, the FCC, the Airline, and the TSA would all have records, records that could be accessed easily.  

His crime boss, however, planned the missions meticulously, creating as much of a gap between the mission objectives and Dan and himself as possible – which, in reality, could have allowed anyone to complete the missions – no need for a high-profile pilot who was a total amateur.

Meanwhile, the stripper (really a prostitute) falls for Dan and vice versa – and they have an unbelievable sex life whenever there is a break in the hit-man missions.

Dan’s deal with the crime boss is to have his wife and friend (her lover) killed.  In the end, her lover is just stripped of his pilot license and Dan saves his wife from death, literally with minutes to spare, then pushes her through an instant divorce (also unlikely).

AND the F16 mission in Iraq.  He’s shot down and comes across an anti-aircraft site where he manages to kill most of the soldiers there to save the rescue helicopter that is arriving to save him.

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So, what does all this mean in terms of John’s life, John’s view of himself?  Well clearly there is still a lot of anger with his divorces – and a lot of fantasy as to how they might have ended differently.  This is an odd sense of morality – in doing something “the right way”, honor, respect (from and for the crime boss), and all that.  He does “save” his soon-to-be ex-wife from being murdered (at his request) by the crime boss, just in the nick of time, then shuttles her off in the instant divorce with what he decides is an equitable sharing of his (hitman) money.  All the while having raucous sex with his stripper/prostitute.  

His excuse for comfortably slipping into the hitman role is the fact that he had seen his mother murdered and plunged the knife into his father’s chest.  He never actually states it that way, but it is referenced numerous times so the reader is left with no alternative than to accept it as reasonable.  John has never had such an event (double murder) in his life, so perhaps this is how he reasons that while he’d like this kind of “excitement” in his life, he would never actually stoop to be a hitman.

As for the stripper/prostitute falling in love with Dan (and he with her), in a way that is him rescuing her from her lifestyle – except she chose that life, she loved that life and to some degree intended to continue some form of sex-work – which he was OK with, so long as he got “his” on a regular basis.  All through this story, there is a gerrymandered line between what things were ok on a moral scale and what things were not.  For example, he was concerned with every hit that there was a “good reason” the person needed to die.  Yet sometimes it was the hit was a wife beater or murderer, but other times it was just someone muscling in the boss’s business.  His wife cheating on him signaled the end of their marriage and for a while, a reason to kill her, yet literally minutes after witnessing her transgression, he was having sex with a stripper – all the while repeatedly claiming that during his marriage he NEVER strayed with another woman. 

Oddly, he often works in how little money pilots make and the need for them to have secondary income (part of his justification for becoming a hitman).  Reality Check!!!  Pilots make lots of money – a major airline captain makes three times as much money as I ever did.  It is another departure from reality coupled with an inflated self-worth for someone who will likely be replaced by a computer in the not-too-distant future. 

Finally, Dan was handsome, fit, attractive to all women, all around wonderful airline captain – all things John only dreamed to be.  Well, maybe he’s a good airline captain. Well, maybe not anymore.

This is the first of two books.  I doubt I’ll be reading the other.

P.S. Someone passed on part of John’s response as I have him blocked. I received and shelved the book in late July as I was in the middle of a book series. I read Departures mid-September over two days and wrote the book report 9/19 believing it would at some point in the future come in handy. I then mailed the book to Mom. I have receipts but I know you are unaccustomed to actually respecting facts, preferring to make up your own. And for a website no one reads, when I post here I usually get a response within a couple of hours……….

Goodbye John