Rating: 
Summary: Really good answers on what happened to Earhart
Review: By 1970, the former head of the Chicago based A-1 Detective Agency, Nathan Heller, enjoys retirement in Florida. However, his idyll relaxation ends when he meets the Texan, J.T. "Buddy" Busch. The Texan offers an opportunity for the sixty-four year old Nathan to finally learn what truly happened to his old friend, Amelia Earhart, who disappeared over the horizon over three decades ago. Nathan cannot resist looking for the aviator, who he provided security for back in 1935. Thus, Nathan steps out of retirement and begins his greatest quest of all: to learn what happened to Ms. Earhart. The ninth novel in the Heller historical mystery series is a great tale that brilliantly blends fact and reasonable speculation into a wonderful fiction novel. The research is obviously meticulous and adds authenticity to the novel, proving that Max Allan Collins is not FLYING BLIND with this tale, which ought to be required reading for history students. Nathan remains refreshing and charming, and the support cast, especially Amelia, is a welcome addition to the book. Mr. Collins is clearly one of the top writers of historical mysteries and fans of the sub-genre should read all nine Heller books for some of the best mysteries on the market today. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Slander? Nah.
Review: Flying Blind is a solid entry, though not my favorite, in the excellent Nathan Heller mystery series. The "slandering the dead" complaint may reflect a generation gap. I don't find the depiction of AE as bisexual to be slanderous at all. The depiction of her sex life may be prurient, but it is completely in character with the narrator. I can't speak to the Packard tranny; that may be an error. (Maybe old Heller's memory is slipping as he writes his "memoirs"). As to the 9mm, that's no anachronism. Browning did make a 9mm automatic that predates the classic 1935 Hi-Power. 9mm was not common in the U.S. in Heller's day, but not unheard of. Many war-trophy Lugers were in the hands of the good, the bad and the ugly on the mean streets of the USA.
Rating: 
Summary: Collins take historical speculation too far
Review: Flying Blind troubled me in ways that none of the other Nate Heller books have troubled me. (I've read a total of nine.) The most important source of my reservations is Max Allan Collins' portrayal of Amelia Earhart's sex life, which seemed speculative to the point of presumption. While historians and biographers have long wondered if she was bisexual or lesbian, that speculation is a long way from having Heller, in one scene, discover Ms. Earhart in bed with another woman. The mistake is aggravated by the fact that Collins doesn't use his interpretation of Ms. Earhart's sexuality to illuminate her character--the same night she's been with the woman she goes to bed with Heller, just like any of Heller's numerous other girlfriends. The two carry on an intermittent affair throughout the rest of the novel, even talk about marriage--but the subject of Ms. Earhart's feelings for women never comes up again, leaving the impression that Collins employs it solely as a sensationalistic plot twist. (Toward the end, in a passage that is less important but even more outrageous, Heller asserts that Ms. Earhart's favorite heterosexual position was woman-on-top. Exactly where in his research did Collins find that "fact"?) Amelia Earhart is a genuine American heroine. She deserves better treatment than this. In Collins' favor, the book resembles the others in the series in that he has done a great deal of research, most of it accurate, and often manages to render the atmosphere of Depression-era America convincingly. Occasionally, however, inaccurate or anachronistic details jar--another reviewer has mentioned a Packard's automatic transmission and Heller's 9 mm sidearm. My personal favorite occurs when Collins has James Forrestal, assistant secretary of the Navy, tell Heller that the Japanese are developing a carrier aircraft called by two names--"Claude" and "Zero." Historically, Claude and Zero (aka "Zeke") were two different fighters, a fact still widely known and easy to find out. That Collins gets it wrong undermines a reader's faith in his other research. The Heller series started off as a chronicle of the detective's adventures in the politically-corrupt and mob-run city of Chicago, fertile ground for Collins' brand of historical fiction. Recent installments, however, have found the character evolving into a 1930s version of James Bond who takes his investigations to exotic locations like Hawaii, New Orleans, and the Caribbean. Heller's abortive rescue of Earhart on the Pacific island of Saipan is blatantly unbelievable, leaving me wondering when he's going to get back home. Surely Heller must have been connected somehow to Mayor Daley's Democratic machine and the electoral hanky-panky that won Illinois for John Kennedy in 1960. Surely Heller must have investigated the 1968 Democratic convention riots and the trial of the Chicago 7. How about future Heller books on those? They'd get him back where he belongs.
Rating:
Summary: Collins take historical speculation too far
Review: Flying Blind troubled me in ways that none of the other Nate Heller books have troubled me. (I've read a total of nine.) The most important source of my reservations is Max Allan Collins' portrayal of Amelia Earhart's sex life, which seemed speculative to the point of presumption. While historians and biographers have long wondered if she was bisexual or lesbian, that speculation is a long way from having Heller, in one scene, discover Ms. Earhart in bed with another woman. The mistake is aggravated by the fact that Collins doesn't use his interpretation of Ms. Earhart's sexuality to illuminate her character--the same night she's been with the woman she goes to bed with Heller, just like any of Heller's numerous other girlfriends. The two carry on an intermittent affair throughout the rest of the novel, even talk about marriage--but the subject of Ms. Earhart's feelings for women never comes up again, leaving the impression that Collins employs it solely as a sensationalistic plot twist. (Toward the end, in a passage that is less important but even more outrageous, Heller asserts that Ms. Earhart's favorite heterosexual position was woman-on-top. Exactly where in his research did Collins find that "fact"?) Amelia Earhart is a genuine American heroine. She deserves better treatment than this. In Collins' favor, the book resembles the others in the series in that he has done a great deal of research, most of it accurate, and often manages to render the atmosphere of Depression-era America convincingly. Occasionally, however, inaccurate or anachronistic details jar--another reviewer has mentioned a Packard's automatic transmission and Heller's 9 mm sidearm. My personal favorite occurs when Collins has James Forrestal, assistant secretary of the Navy, tell Heller that the Japanese are developing a carrier aircraft called by two names--"Claude" and "Zero." Historically, Claude and Zero (aka "Zeke") were two different fighters, a fact still widely known and easy to find out. That Collins gets it wrong undermines a reader's faith in his other research. The Heller series started off as a chronicle of the detective's adventures in the politically-corrupt and mob-run city of Chicago, fertile ground for Collins' brand of historical fiction. Recent installments, however, have found the character evolving into a 1930s version of James Bond who takes his investigations to exotic locations like Hawaii, New Orleans, and the Caribbean. Heller's abortive rescue of Earhart on the Pacific island of Saipan is blatantly unbelievable, leaving me wondering when he's going to get back home. Surely Heller must have been connected somehow to Mayor Daley's Democratic machine and the electoral hanky-panky that won Illinois for John Kennedy in 1960. Surely Heller must have investigated the 1968 Democratic convention riots and the trial of the Chicago 7. How about future Heller books on those? They'd get him back where he belongs.
Rating:
Summary: one of the better Nate Heller books
Review: Having read all of Collins' Nate Heller casebooks, I would rank this one as fitting into the top 5 or so. Not as snappy as the early Chicago-based ones and certainly nowhere close to the pinacle of the series Stolen Away (about the Lindbergh kidnapping), this book still has all of the best features of these books: Great background, terrific characters, funny dialogue, ample sex (using charmingly veiled language without lapsing into cute-ness), and a plausible plot that finds our man in the midst of one of the 20th Centuries best mysteries. If you haven't read a Heller book, seek out True Crime and True Detective, then jump to Stolen Away and then come here. You'll be glad you did.
Rating: 
Summary: SEX AND ANACHRONISMS
Review: In the midst of many wonderful reviews and positive comments from readers about FLYING BLIND have come occasional complaints (some posted here) about the sexual content of the book...these prudish outbursts are usually accompanied by dinging me over a couple historical anarchronisms, siezed upon with the glee of a child finding a particularly pleasing toy in the CrackerJacks box. First, I understand that some readers do not like my fictional character having sex with the very real Amelia Earhart, or that she is portrayed, unapologetically, nonjudgementally, as a bixsexual. Of course, since Nate Heller is fictional, he didn't really have sex with her...and my advice is, "Lighten up." If I'm going to tell my story from within history, via my private eye witness, Heller has to get involved...sometimes a little more involved than other times. As for these historical inaccuracies, which are pretty damn few if you ask me (which you haven't), some of them reflect ignorance not my own: for example, you don't have to be a gun buff (which I'm not) to know that the notion that a Browning nine millimeter automatic wasn't around in the '30s is absurd. As for putting a Packard in "park," I don't remember Heller doing that, but he well may have used the term loosely...and, since he is now in his nineties, down in Florida writing these memoirs from the vantage point of all these years, you might want to cut the old boy a break. I think his memory is pretty good, considering. (The supposed error about Jap Zeroes cited by one reader came directly from research....If you take a look at the number of subjects I have covered, and exhaustively researched, there is no way I could be an expert on them all, and I am dependent on my research -- when a real expert gets it wrong, I sometimes follow blissfully along, assuming I'm being well-informed. A mislabelled caption in an otherwise reliable reference book gave me the wrong air corps patch which went into SAVING PRIVATE RYAN and earned me a dozen letters of complaint. I apologize, but this process is not a science...and is only sometimes an art.)
Rating:
Summary: plot -8, execution -2
Review: It was a sorry day when the courts disallowed slander of the dead, it opened the doors for some to trash the famous dead. Mr. Collins takes this to a new low and it wasn't necessary sine the general story is quite good without the trash. Signet should get some older editors, ie a 1935-6 Hudson with "park" in it's trans. a 30's ex-cop using his father's 9mm, I don't think so- maybe if he was a German cop, but not Chicago.
Rating:
Summary: plot -8, execution -2
Review: It was a sorry day when the courts disallowed slander of the dead, it opened the doors for some to trash the famous dead. Mr. Collins takes this to a new low and it wasn't necessary sine the general story is quite good without the trash. Signet should get some older editors, ie a 1935-6 Hudson with "park" in it's trans. a 30's ex-cop using his father's 9mm, I don't think so- maybe if he was a German cop, but not Chicago.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written and entertaining, but offputting
Review: It's been a while since I've read a Nathan Heller novel. I loved "Stealing Away" and enjoyed the others I've read, but I figured that the more we saw, the harder it would be to swallow just how many famous mysteries Heller was involved in. And that's what happened here, especially since Heller is far more involved with Amelia Earhart than he's ever been with a client or a victim. That involvement colored the rest of the book in a way that was a bit more cynical than usual and that made Heller a lot harder to take. I appreciate that the speculation about history's truth is just that, and that we can disregard the whole thing, but Heller's love for "Amy" makes almost every other character in a position of authority seem sordid if not evil. The result is a rather simplistic narrative. That Collins would treat Huey Long with more sympathy than any effort to spy on Japan in preparation for the inevitable war is perpelxing. This is still a fun read, but it's just not the same as the earlier works. And after you've had your hero sleep with Amelia Earhart, what's next? Eleanor Roosevelt?
Rating:
Summary: Well written and entertaining, but offputting
Review: It's been a while since I've read a Nathan Heller novel. I loved "Stealing Away" and enjoyed the others I've read, but I figured that the more we saw, the harder it would be to swallow just how many famous mysteries Heller was involved in. And that's what happened here, especially since Heller is far more involved with Amelia Earhart than he's ever been with a client or a victim. That involvement colored the rest of the book in a way that was a bit more cynical than usual and that made Heller a lot harder to take. I appreciate that the speculation about history's truth is just that, and that we can disregard the whole thing, but Heller's love for "Amy" makes almost every other character in a position of authority seem sordid if not evil. The result is a rather simplistic narrative. That Collins would treat Huey Long with more sympathy than any effort to spy on Japan in preparation for the inevitable war is perpelxing. This is still a fun read, but it's just not the same as the earlier works. And after you've had your hero sleep with Amelia Earhart, what's next? Eleanor Roosevelt?
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