To plagiarize every blurb-filled review of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster ever, Crashers is a high adrenaline rush of a summer read, filled with kick-ass fighting heroines, international intrigue, gun fights, multiple airplane crashes, and dedicated government servants. Okay, that last bit probably wouldn’t appear in a review of a Michael Bay movie. If you can suspend disbelief, or at least if you can read tongue in cheek, it’s something light and fun to read on a nice relaxing vacation.
Simple premise: it’s possible to hook into the control systems for an airplane remotely. Bad guy figures out how to do so, and uses his power to crash one. It’s a dry run for a second terrorist attack on a plane that possibly will come later in the book if the good guys don’t figure it out. The first is not announced as an attack, so no one knows that bad guys are involved (except us readers).
The crashers are the members of the National Transportation Safety Board (N.T.S.B.) team that investigates the crash. Dr. Leonard Tommy
Tomszak is the guy in charge, even though he resigned after his first crash in charge because he couldn’t solve the case. He’s a pathologist. Also on the team are an ex cop bomb expert, an ex-sub sonar expert (she’s the cockpit voice recorder analyst), a jet engine engineer,
and numerous representatives of airplane parts manufacturers as well as bunches of others. They think the crash is your normal run of the mill airplane disaster. Will they figure it out in time? Which, by the way, they have about 3 days according to the blurb on my A.R.C. Tension tension tension!
The one review point that matters is that the conflicts and pace of the book are well-plotted. Starting a couple dozen pages in, the book did well to keep my attention on what’s going to happen next?
which is what a thriller should do.
Not that it really matters, but the facts and situations and characters are paper-thin and ludicrous. Only two characters get much of a back story. The time line is ridiculous. I can’t comment on how accurately he portrays an N.T.S.B. crash investigation team, but if it’s anything like how he does computers… Seriously, how many times have I seen an 18 year old high school computer genius (who is taking web design classes at community college) step in and do what experienced programmers can’t easily do? In real life, never. In movies, they do this a lot. One does not slave Microsoft Access to G.I.S. to produce a Powerpoint animation of how shrapnel hits a plane fuselage. If you are using Microsoft Access, you aren’t a genius. As the writers of Star Trek said in an interview, they had characters tech the tech
in their scripts when they planned to have geeky stuff substituted later. This is that. So I suspect that portrayals of other stuff is kinda off too.
But, whatever! I was able to get past that actually. One doesn’t look for realism in a book with lots of explosions. It’s go go go, all the way to the end.
A couple other blogged reviews:
Title: Crashers
Author: Dana Haynes
Imprint / publisher: Minotaur Books / Macmillan
Format: Advance readers cpy
Length: 343 p.
Publication date: June 2010
ISBN-13: 978-0-312-59988-1
I received Crashers free of charge from the publisher through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program, which asks that I post a review on LibraryThing in return. In accordance with my policy on review copies I will donate $13.74 (the price of the book on Amazon) to the A.L.S.A.
Thanks for the shout-out! Truly appreciate it! Dana