AIRFRAME by Michael Crichton

This is sort of a disturbing book for anyone who's spent significant time on an airplane. I'm not one of those people who goes flying off to another city every week or so. But when I can I do like to make international flights, and that's even more disturbing in this book. Though it's reassuring that I take regular commercial carriers, not charter flights. I've never even considered that. I'm only vaguely aware of that. And I'm not about to start now, after reading this book.

It starts with a terrifying accident, though it's reassuring that a plane could go through that and still fly for hours to a destination.

Much of the book is an attack on the current media trends to attack without regard to facts. Like much of Crichton's work, it's more factual and editorial than fictional. There's a dialog late in the book between a character and the airplane manufacturer's lawyer about how the system allows the media to destroy companies without factual evidence. The lawyer just shrugs and says, that's the system.

The heros are the dedicated hard-working men and women of the airline industry and the airplanes they design and build in spite of everything. That's why in a sense it's reassuring to read this and know how well airplanes are engineered.

Of course, it's also true that poor maintenance on the part of the carriers can screw up the best airplanes. He explains how this happened to the DC-10.

From a purely fictional standpoint it's flawed because the physical threats to the main character don't come off well. She's chased several times, at first by guys presumably part of the union, which blames her for some renegade management actions (this book makes unions look bad also). The second chase seems to come from the man supposed to be watching her, but it's not clear what the purpose was, since Marder wanted her alive to screw up the live interview. So why did Richman try to kill her?

All in all, not his best work but certainly fascinating for what you learn, which is part of Crichton's attraction.