Airframe: A Forgettable Read Involving Airplanes

Airframe By Michael Crichton

Overall: A Forgettable Read Involving Airplanes

Being a fan of Michael Crichton, I have to read the books. I over looked in the past, simply because there aren’t going to be any more. So I decided to finally read Airframe. Not my first choice in reading material, but ahh well, I’ll give anything a try. Now I have to write this thing before I forget what I just read.

So given the name Airframe, one would assume it’s about airplanes. And it is. The book starts with a incident on a plane where fifty six people are injured and four people died. The owners of the plane, a company called Norten is stunned. The plane is suppose to be safe. Perfect. Un crashable under the conditions it was in. This gives the Norton company a bad image. Norton was planning to make a big sale of planes to China, but now unless the mystery of why the plane is solved, the sale is in jeopardy. The manager John Marder puts together a team head by Casey Singleton to solve the issue. But unlike most cases where they may have a month. He is supplying only a week, giving them, all unbelievable expectations for results.
The story centers on Casey Singleton as she tries to solve the mystery. Yet as she puts together the clues, there are other thing on their way. Shipping and engineers who will work in building 64 on the plant hear wind of rumors of how Marder is trying to sell the company off. So they destroy things intentionally or injure some one to up hold the investigation because they want to keep their jobs. Casey has intern named Bob Riechman, who she is suppose to be training. She’s supposed to be showing him the ropes. Yet as it goes on, Casey questions if he’s there for another reason, because he seems to have no interest. John Marder often interferes. Lastly, she has to deal with the press to save the company. Overall it’s not that thrilling of plot. But that is the plot line.

So what’s the good? The good is that is written by Michael Crichton, so even if the topic is dull, the character aren’t. They appear real and relatable. Casey is a workaholic who works as hard as she can to achieve her goal, and has not really boyfriend , but a guy around to make her feel better when times get tough. She is a busy woman, and sad to say, but I was there six months ago and I was in her world. And to me when I can relate to a character like that, it helps the book a lot. We all like to read about people, not these cardboard cut out stereotypes we see so often. And then there’s the bad.

The bad is this book revolves around a airplane investigation that takes place entirely at the Norton Airplane plant. Unlike Jurassic Park, Prey, or Timeline, this has no action or science fiction. I feel the author may of been one of those people fascinated by airplanes, so he decided to write about it. But I for one, couldn’t care less about air planes in general, so to me the topic is kind of dull. He spends pages talking about mechanics of a plane. And call me a nerd, but when he does this in other books talking about time travel, DNA splicing and nano bots and how science and mechanics are involved, I’m not bored. And one last thing and yes this is one of my pet peeves. There is a quote on the book saying, “Suspense is non stop” I wish they would stop putting that on books like those. Suspense for me is “Oh my god what is going to happen?” And this book is not one of those.

So over all, it’s forgettable book. A week from now, I won’t remember anything about it. And it’s just about airplanes. So if you like air planes then go ahead. If you like Michael Crichton it is a good one time read. I mean it’s no where as bad as State Of Fear. So I can only rate it as decent. I give it two smoothies out of four.

Rating 2 smoothies out of four

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