The Sky Is Falling is a 2001 novel by Sidney Sheldon.
Author Sidney Sheldon Country United States Language
English Genre(s) Crime novel Publisher Warner Books Publication date 2001 Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Pages 416 (hardback edition) ISBN ISBN 0-446-61017-8 Preceded by
Tell Me Your Dreams Followed by
Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Synopsis
The main character to this book is
Dana Evans, an anchorwoman for the press, who was also featured, though not as a main character, in another of Sidney Sheldon's book, The Best Laid Plans. The story starts off with a prologue, a mysterious auction that involves a huge amount of money. Dana Evans had just came back from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She is rushing to a meeting with the last member of the Winthrop family,
Gary Winthrop. The story starts to get complicated when, a few hours after the interview with Dana, Gary Wintrop was shot and killed by some thieves who were, supposedly, stealing some paintings. Although most viewed this tragic row of events as accidents, the rest of the Wintrop family were killed in a series of suspicious "accidents" a few months beforehand, Dana was the exception.
Taylor and Madeline Wintrop, Gary's parents, perished in a fire that burnt down their house,
Paul Wintrop died when his car drove off a cliff, and
Julie Wintrop died in a skiing accident. Dana couldn't believe that accidents had wiped out one of the most prominent families in the world. She began to investigate, dwelving deeper and deeper into the family's secrets. Meanwhile,
Kemal, the crippled boy (he only has one arm) Dana found in Sarajevo, caused trouble and launched into fights at school, due to the fact that some bullies, mainly a boy named Ricky Underwood, kept insulting Dana. Dana was called to school a couple of times to manage Kemal. Kemal was finally expelled after he hospitalized his tormentor, Ricky.
Jeff Connors, Dana's fiance, is also occupied, looking after Rachel Stevens, his ex-wife, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. Rachel is a model, one of the highest paid in the world, and was Jeff's wife for 4 years. Due to Dana's investigations, and him taking care of Rachel, they postponed their wedding to a later date. Dana couldn't find anything remotely suspicious about the Wintrops family and was on the verge of giving up when she unexpectedly stumbled upon a case against Taylor Wintrop, while searching the internet for apartments for her, Jeff and Kemal. The case was filed by
Joan Sinisi and was later dropped for some mysterious reason. Dana soon found out that Taylor Wintrop paid a huge settlement for the case to be dismissed. To Dana's astonishment, Joan refused to talk about the case, and asked her to leave. When Dana finally persuaded Joan to tell her, Joan "accidentally" fell down from her balcony and died. Her death was ruled out as an
accident, even though its impossible for her to fall out of her balcony accidentally, due to a four foot wall preventing it. The maid taking care of Joan left after the "accident", to visit her family. As she, determined despite the dangers, followed her leads, Dana befriended
Roger Hudson was a former senate leader and billionaire who had some strange connection to Taylor Wintrop, and his wife,
Pamela Hudson. They helped Dana a lot on her investigation, although Roger Hudson was very uncomfortable when Dana started talking about Taylor Wintrops. Dana became friends with the couple when Kemal broke an extremely expensive vase, she'd been forced to take Kemal with her when he got into major trouble at school, and the Hudsons' told her not to worry. She also made an enemy of
General Victor Booster, head of the FRA, when she interviewed him. He screamed himself hoarseand told her to leave before she even got ten words out. Booster's aide,
Jack Stone, became her friend when he helped her out, by warning her off Booster's abruptness and anger towards the media.