Airframe

Rating:
Summary: Bad
Review: I am really disappointed in this book. I have always enjoyed Crichton books, and found them entertaining. This one is boring, the characters are not well-developed, the suspense negligible. I wish popular authors would forget publishing just to publish and get back to what made them interesting in the first place -- having a good story to tell

Rating:
Summary: _Airframe_ Delivers
Review: _Airframe_ promises to keep Michael Crichton on top of the best-seller list with the intensity only he can deliver. In this, his 11th thriller, Crichton pulls the reader into a laborious aircraft disaster investigation and follows the investigation to an unheard-of sixth day solution. Although he borrows pieces of plot from _Disclosure_, he does so sparingly and well. Through the airline manufacturer's investigation, _Airframe_ conquers the television media, showing the reader their rushed 'reporting' and the misinformation that results. _Airframe_ continues to satisfy the expectations of Crichton readers, and leaves them longing for what he'll do next.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting, informational and exciting work.
Review: "Airframe" Author:Michael Crichton

I find "Airframe" is a very interesting book, at least enough for the reader to finish it. Crichton, as in all his novels, did a lot of research. Despite this, I found many aspects in this novel tiring, specially the fact that there are too many technical details that almost dwarf the main story -of course they don't get to do it-. The characters (you can count over three thousand), except, maybe Casey Singleton, aren't sufficiently developed and at times they become essentially boring cartoons, because Crichton employs too much time in his techno babble. Not that the facts about the airplanes are so boring, but sometimes they take over the plot, slowing down its rythm. Anyway, I enjoyed this novel very much because it presents a chain of very exciting coincidences and events (Crichton succesfully keeps our attention making real life a lot more interesting), so many of them, that sometimes they can get exhausting. What I definitely liked the most was that the book makes a solid critic at modern life aspects such as sensationalistic media and industry management corruption. Like his "Lost World", at the end it makes us wonder: What's this world turning into?, because we realize that honesty and search for the truth -what Casey defends as an honorable person, even when it could cost her job- are just forgotten principles and all that rules powerful people's minds is search for money and more power. Happily, Casey triumphs at the end, but actually because of her luck, as her neighbor makes her see, "You were stupid. You should have lied" he tells her, and we think next time she will have no other choice.

A great novel from a great writer. I can't wait till the movie!

Rating:
Summary: MOVING THE CHESS PIECES
Review: AIRFRAME is another mystery on Crichton's growing list. The daughter in this tale shouts, "Oh, Mom, I missed you!" Which is what the reader will also echo in his or her search for character in this novel. When you write film scripts, which this essentially is, you leave it up to Sharon Stone to provide the elements of character. The heroine, Casey, in this story is one of the author's chess pieces, a woman who dumps her daughter off on her ex husband and engages in zipless sex while she stumbles her way to solving the mystery of the why an airplane dove out of control.

Crichton does put some nice messages out there. He shows how TV news show producers and anchormen become prostitutes to their own stories. He displays the infighting that goes on between corporate bosses and their wannabe underlings. He demonstrates how corporations play footsie with their big customers. So what if he does pass off film scripts as novels, Hollywood is where the money is. The reader can't have everything.

Rating:
Summary: an excellant book that is hard to put down
Review: Casey Singleton, divorced and mother of one child, vice president of Norton Aircraft. Recently promoted from Business Unit Manager to Quality Assurance rep on the Incident Review Team.

Casey's new job title is immediately put the test with the disaster of flight 545 when her boss (Mader) gives her and her team of engineers a week to solve the mystery or it may affect the sae of their planes to china. Then to top it off she has a new assistant (Richman) to train in.

Learn how a plane flies and what is involved in checking out a plane after a disaster to find out what went wrong. Any technical terms are explained in very understanble wording. You don't need a college degree to understand what is being explained.

See how the media is like our media of today. More of a hinderance than a help.

What is the media doing to be a hinderance? Can She stop them from giving bad publicity that may ruin the company? Who is trying to stop casey from finding the answers? Why is her new assistant have secret meetings with her boss? Is the N22 a deathtrap? Can the mystery as to the cause of the disaster be found in time? Will the sell of planes to China go through?

To find the answers to these questions and more and also have some fun learning about planes at the same time read Airframe by Michael Crichton. Once you get started you won't want to put the book down. Great mystery!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant in its Premise
Review: Over the years, Michael Crichton has evolved from being an excellent author of the scientific thriller into being an author who is also highly accurate in often acute social critiques. As he did once before in Rising Sun, Michael Crichton takes aim at the corporate world and the media in this harrowing novel about a plane crash and how the manufacturer and the media became involved in it.

Casey Singleton is a vice president at Norton, an aircraft manufacturer that has built up a reputation for quality and safety. At this time, Norton is preparing a multi-billion dollar aircraft sale to an Asian airline, which would help to boost the company, which has fallen on hard times lately. Also, workers at Norton's plant in California have heard that the company might possibly be outsourcing or closing down some plants, costing thousands of jobs and elevating tensions between the white-collar people who run the company and the blue-collar people who work there. The task is forced upon Casey to deal with percolating worker attitudes while maintaining a positive face to the media to ensure that the aircraft deal does not go sour.

Then a plane crash involving one of Norton's aircraft occurs. Casey must then deal with the aforementioned troubles and the plane crash, where she is now thrust into the spotlight as the public face of the tragedy and must find out what went wrong on Transatlantic Flight 545. As she delves closer to the answer of what went wrong, she realizes that she is being set up to take the fall. Casey must then race against time to find out what went wrong and to save her job and life.

Michael Crichton once again summons all of his formidable literary skill to write a novel that speaks not only of the unbridled nature of the press, but of the competitive world of corporations.

Rating:
Summary: One Of Crichton's best books
Review: A terrible accident has occurred on a transpacific N-22 flight. The plane is able to land but the interior cabin has been torn to shreds. Casey Singleton, the public relations and quality assurance for Norton is assigned to find out what happened on flight 545. This is a very untimely accident when the company has a multi-billion dollar deal going down with China. The N-22 is one of the best planes in the business, but this doesn't make it look good when there seems to be an error with the slats in the wings. Things only get worse when Casey views video footage of what happened in the cabin. But as things look their grimmest, stress and tensions rise as Jennifer Malone, a producer from Nightline finds out about this horrible occurrence. Now Malone is producing a story that could and will jeopardize the big China deal, and possibly put Norton under for good. Casey is the only one who can save the company, but when the workers start putting force on her, can she manage to do it?
This book has vivid, life like descriptions that make you never want to travel in an airplane ever again. It is a brilliant thriller that truly will make you view aviation in a whole new light. A "cat and mouse" strategy leaves you guessing what will happen next and who might slip up causing their empire to fall. It turns out to be either Norton goes under or Malone's producing career is terminated. This is one of Crichton's best books.


Rating:
Summary: Airframe Review
Review: I have just finished reading Airframe by Micheal Crichton. I have read several of his other books and I think this is one of his best yet. The way he keeps you guessing and makes you want to keep reading is awesome. Crichton develops the main character, Casey Singleton, in a way that is absolutely stunning. He leads you to believe that the predicament is simple and easy to solve but then he throws a wrench in the works and gives you new information, characters, and a whole other side of the story. Instantly you believe that Casey and her team at Norton Aircraft will quickly figure out why the accident that they are investigating in the book, took place. However he throws in a couple twists and turns and you can hardly guess how everything will be solved. In the end, the truth is finally revealed and everything snaps together. Airframe is and amazing jumble of twists and turns that will keep you guessing till the very end. I highly recommend Airframe to all readers.

Rating:
Summary: Mixed Feelings about Airframe!
Review: I just finished reading Michael Crichton's `Airframe', and found it a little above average. I have never read any of Crichton's books, but I had read a lot of rave reviews on this works such as `Jurassic Park', `Congo' and `Andromeda Strain', a decided I would give the author a try by reading this book as my first.

The story starts off with TransPacific Airlines 545, a commercial airplane, which undergoes some catastrophe in the air, leaving 3 people dead and around 50 people badly injured. It is now up to Casey Singleton to find out the consequences that led to the disaster. However, while she and her research crew start working on the flight, Casey discovers other events that are happening in the background of company, and realizes that someone does not want her to succeed in her mission on the TPA 545. Meanwhile, a news agency starts writing a story on the flight, their main aim to bring down the company, adding to Casey's problems. Will she be able to solve the mystery of the flight and save the company from closing down?

While the story starts off fast paced and exciting, it slows down towards the middle, building up again towards the end and resulting in an anticlimax, leaving the reader a little disappointed. What made me give this book a 4-star rating was mainly due to the explicit information that Crichton provides about the Aircrafts and their manufacturing industries. It is obvious that Crichton has done a thorough research on the background and the workings of an aircraft, and for this reason I gave this book as 4 star rating. Now I have a better understanding of how the flight works, and have learnt some technical terms and their functions as well.

This book has its moments, and provides a lot of information, but I wouldn't put it as a very suspenseful thriller.


Rating:
Summary: An eye-opening look into the world of crash investigations
Review: The incident in the book is fictitious (as is Norton Aircraft), but the possibility is not. While not as compelling as some of Crichton's other novels, Airframe is an eye-opening look into the world of the National Transportation Safety Board and aircraft manufacturers. High profile crashes like the Columbia breakup, TWA Flight 800 and United Flight 232 have made the public more aware of what can go wrong on an aircraft -- and how hard it can be to find the true cause because the wreckage does not always make the root cause of the accident clear. Airframe proves this point as investigators pore through physical evidence, video and audio records from flight voice/data recorders and passenger video cameras, and the "black box" (they are actually bright orange for visibility reasons) that records the status of major systems on an aircraft on a looping tape or on a digital recorder. The true root cause of the accident is uncovered at last -- and it's something that one would never expect to happen with the long hours pilots put into their training and with the extensive simulations and testing carried out by aircraft manufacturers -- but is something that is quite capable of bringing down a modern airliner. It's worth reading, especially to any fellow aerospace buffs out there.