Buy This Book!Air Frame
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Cruising 35,000 feet above the earth, a twin-engine commercial jet encounters an accident that leaves 3 dead, 56 wounded, and the cabin in shambles. What happened? With a multi-billion-dollar company-saving deal on the line, Casey Singleton is sent by her hard-driving boss to uncover the mysterious circumstances that led to the disaster before more people die. But someone doesn't want her to find the truth. Airframe bristles with authentic information, technical jargon, and the command of detail Crichton's readers have come to expect. Check out Amazon.com's Airframe feature and read an excerpt from the book! - This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
Amazon.com
How did Michael Crichton know--before ValuJet, before TWA Flight 800--that airline safety would be a hot topic at the end of 1996? But there's more than an amazing instinct for popular taste at work in his latest thriller--destined to be read by hundreds of thousands of those very same airplane passengers it was designed to scare the seatbelts off. Enroute from Hong Kong to Denver, a brand new plane pitches and dives like a porpoise before crashing. The airline's officer in charge of quality assurance--a sharp-eyed, hard-nosed woman named Casey Singleton--has to find out why, before more passengers and the airline's future go into a tailspin. As always in Crichton's expert hands, readers learn a lot about science while lapping up their thrills. - This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
The New York Times Book Review, Tom Shone
Impressing the boss is one of the great-unacknowledged subjects of the modern-day thriller ... in Mr. Crichton's books it reaches a truly ruthless pitch: his fiction is one long efficiency drive. - This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
This thriller's central mystery and peripheral skullduggery are routine, but the TV-journalism satire is fresh and funny.
Midwest Book Review
It's a tribute to Crichton's talents that the theme of airplane safety and frame construction turns into a riveting thriller which is so hard to put down. Even those used to traditional airplane disaster stories will relish the different atmosphere here, which focuses on a plane's problems and the underlying politics affecting an entire plane building company's corporate structure and coworker relationships. A savvy female investigator finds her job and very life on the line as she struggles against time to uncover the truth about a puzzling plane disaster. - This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
From Booklist , November 15, 1996
On its way over the Pacific, a Chinese charter flight from Hong Kong to Denver "porpoises," or steeply dives and climbs in rapid succession, for two minutes without warning. This "incident" produces plenty of lost lunches--and 3 (eventually 4) deaths and 56 injuries. Norton Aircraft, maker of the plane's airframe (i.e., fuselage, tail, and wing), has to find out what happened and why pronto or lose a huge sale of the same model to China--and have to pink-slip all its employees, sending ripples throughout the economy as subcontractors do likewise. Norton VP Casey Singleton is point person for the investigation: she has to stay on top of the overall inquiry and keep the top brass and the media apprised of progress. Making her job harder is the chief operating officer, chafing over not being company president and friendly as a snapping turtle, anyway; a pesky--and mysterious--new "assistant" ; labor unrest over rumors that Norton will let the Chinese assemble the wings (the most labor-intensive part of plane building) as part of the sale; and a careless-with-the-truth TV producer eager to expose a flying death trap. Loading it with interesting detail on airliner construction, aerodynamics, the international trade in commercial aircraft, and air safety, Crichton produces a taut, absorbing suspenser, anyway. Knopf has ordered a two million^-copy first printing. Order heavily; they'll all circulate, deservedly. Ray Olson
Copyright© 1996, American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
Book Description
Three passengers are dead. Fifty-six are injured. The interior cabin virtually destroyed. But the pilot manages to land the plane. . . .
At a moment when the issue of safety and death in the skies is paramount in the public mind, a lethal midair disaster aboard a commercial twin-jet airliner bound from Hong Kong to Denver triggers a pressured and frantic investigation.
AIRFRAME is nonstop reading: the extraordinary mixture of super suspense and authentic information on a subject of compelling interest that has been a Crichton landmark since The Andromeda Strain.
Synopsis
Three passengers are dead. Fifty-six are injured. The interior cabin is virtually destroyed. But the pilot manages to land the plane. At a moment when the issue of safety and death in the skies is paramount in the public mind, a lethal midair disaster aboard a commercial airliner triggers a pressured and frantic investigation. "Crichton does for airplanes what Clancy does for submarines, " says the New York Times. Movie rights optioned.
From the Publisher
Of the top 300 mass market titles we published in the past year, AIRFRAME ranks at number 5. This is one part action/adventure and two parts an intellectual thriller. Well worth reading while lounging by the pool side this summer.
From the Back Cover
"THE PACING IS FAST, THE SUSPENSE NONSTOP."
--People
"A ONE-SITTING READ THAT WILL CAUSE A LIFETIME OF WHITE-KNUCKLED NIGHTMARES."
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
"DRAMATICALLY VIVID."
--The New York Times
Air Frame
Buy This Book!
