Departure By A.G. Riddle (Harper Voyager, 330 pages, $26.99)

What do a writer, a venture capitalist, a scientist, a computer programmer and a drunken playboy have in common? They are all survivors of the crash of Flight 305, en route from New York to London.

But where and when has their plane come down? It seems somebody has been playing around with time portals again, plunging the five survivors into a 12

Monkeys- style plot full of the usual paradoxes that come with attempts to save the world from the future.

While the characters are a bit cardboard, A.G. Riddle’s writing is punchy and breathless, and the story is packed with twists and cliffhangers that come at the end of nearly every short chapter. It’s silly stuff, but hard to put down.