Airframe
by Michael Crichton
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Book Reviews of Airframe
Book Review: Attending to contemporary detail
Summary: 4 Stars
This is fast and enjoyable reading, in a credible framework. It is the sort of story that actually happens around us all the time. Michael Crichton immerses us in the technical and legal details of safety issues in aviation, but also packs in some commentary on the contemporary world of outsourcing and international interlocking production, when production and technology is increasingly shifting to China..
The other big topic of this book is the media frenzy that dominates our societies. As one person in the novel says, that "game's got nothing to do with accuracy, or the facts, or reality. It's just a circus." And, that person continues, "sometimes I look around my living room, and the most real thing in the room is the television. It is bright and vivid a mile and the rest of my life looks drab." In other words, there is a giant dislocation that is taking place, away from our own realities to something that's manufactured (the book was written before Internet took over).
Obviously this is not an academic book, it dramatizes this story, adding salacious bits that I would have considered unnecessary, but that probably is needed to make it sell -- almost like an ironic comment upon itself. I personally felt that it was the best book by Michael Crichton I have read so far. No need for future science, a lot of excitement is already happening today, if we look closely and attend to it.
Book Review: Technical jargon as high drama? I don't think so!
Summary: 2 Stars
Crichton has always excelled at mixing his intense research into often mysterious subjects with dramatic, even melodramatic, plots. ANDROMEDA STRAIN told us more about germs and stuff than we wanted to know, but it was gripping. JURASSIC PARK told us a bit more about dinosaurs and stuff than we needed, but it was a good, old-fashioned monster show. DISCLOSURE probably delved more into specifics of harassment law than we needed to enjoy the book, but that gave it an authentic, journalistic edge.In AIRFRAME, I'm sorry to say, the jargon is almost all there is. After an exciting opening chapter, it takes almost the entire book for anything of true interest to happen. We follow Casey, our lead character, from one meeting after another with a bunch of faceless engineers who are going over the plane that was involved in a mishap, trying to find the cause. Once in awhile, her life is in jeopardy, but Crichton writes the technical jargon with the same intensity, speed and emphasis that he does the plot twists, so that the entire book feels the same. It's not a plot peppered with authentic detail...it's a textbook occasionally lightened with some fiction.
Crichton is not the greatest writer (from a literary standpoint) anyway, but his books are so cinematic and crammed with plot that you can still burn through and feel entertained with ease. AIRFRAME is an exception...a clunky book that never takes flight.
Book Review: Airframe
Summary: 3 Stars
Airframe
Airframe, by Michael Crichton would make someone who is interested in aviation even more interested. In the beginning, a plane has a mid-air accident that kills three people. The rest of the book is primarily concerned with describing the investigation that the company launches trying to find out why. In my opinion, since part of the conflict is that the media is producing a story with incomplete information that could ruin the company, one might believe that the author is trying to show how one bad media report could cause good companies to go bankrupt and leave many people unemployed. One good thing about the novel is that it is very factual with its description of how airplanes work. It is also a book that would make any person who is interested in aircraft to become more enthusiastic about them. One bad thing about the story is that it would be thought of as very boring to someone who is not interested in aviation.
The author of the book was Michael Crichton. Crichton was born in Chicago in 1942, and has written many fiction and non fiction works. Most of his novels, such as Jurassic Park, The Lost World, and Congo are science fiction based books and many of them are bestsellers. If the reader liked Airframe, they would probably enjoy The Great Train Robbery, or any of the above mentioned books.
Centennial Critic # 17
Book Review: In My Opinion Crichton's Best
Summary: 5 Stars
I just finished rereading this novel and, even though I knew the ending, it was as good or better the second time around. The story deals with a female executive named Casey Singleton who works at an airframe manufacturer in Los Angeles. Think Hughes Aircraft or Boeing. She's in Quality Assurance and is assigned to a team of engineers who have to determine what caused an incident that killed three and injured fifty on one of the company's planes. To make matters tense, the incident happened on a Chinese airline and if it is shown in the wrong light it could kill the company's multibillion dollar deal with the Chinese. One of the major networks is also planning an expose on the plane after footage of the incident is shown on CNN. Casey is assigned the task of dealing with the media.
The novel was written in Crichton's prime, shortly after he peaked with Jurassic Park and a few years before he started writing real stinkers like Timeline and Prey. The thing I like best about his writing is how he can take complicated topics like aeronautics or network news production and make them understandable with an economy of words. I particularly liked his interpretation of prime time news programming and found his characterizations of engineers to be right on the mark. This rank up there with A Cases of Need and Disclosure as Crichton's best.
Book Review: Underrated by Most--One of My Favorites by Crichton
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm not real sure why this book has never been made into a movie. It is Crichton at his best-- detailed, well plotted, and well written-- and while I know it was a best seller when it came out, it just never seemed to garner the attention his more sci fi oriented books have.A near disaster in the air leaves three people dead and nearly three dozen injured. Casey Singleton is sent by her hard-driving boss to uncover the mysterious circumstances that led to the disaster before more people die. But, as you might expect, someone doesn't want her to find the answers she is looking for and soon she is risking her life to unravel the mystery.
While Crichton has featured strong women in other books, Casey Singleton is, I believe, the first to actually be the lead character in the book. And she is truly a great character! More than just solving the mystery rides in her shoulders, the fate of the company she works for may depend on whether she can solve the mystery before someone sees to it that she is no longer around to try to sort things out.
Crichton probably does a better job of explaining the inner working of airliner manufacturing and the airline industry itself than most textbooks. Well there are echoes of "Disclosure" here, Crichton ably demonstrates that the most entertaining intrigue is corporate intrigue. A truly superior novel.