Rating: 
Summary: Good early effort
Review: While not the best of his work, DeMille's style is demonstrated in an interesting spin on the damaged, "no highway in the sky" supersonic airliner theme. There is military and political intrigue, guilt (as well as lack of it), heroism, and more technical data about high altitude problems than even the interested reader might want to know. The guy gets the girls and, no surprise, she's a fight attendant.The plot turns on a life-saving trip to the bathroom. Each time I enter a toilet on an airliner today, I think about tis book.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to put down!
Review: The plot is a little over the top, but this was still a great read. This book was indeed hard to put down. I was afraid that the confinement of an airplane might make the story a little boring, but this was not the case. Enough outside elements are brought in to keep the story fresh.
Rating:
Summary: Not Your Typical Disaster Book
Review: When I first glanced at this book, I must admit it didn't sound too appealing. I wondered how much different it could be from the many other airplane disaster films I have seen. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. I like DeMille as a writer. I especially enjoy the way he develops his characters. His morally challenged characters are particularly interesting to follow. Mayday is not exception. Like me, you will wonder how you would perform in the shoes of the main protagonist, John Barry. You will also despise the faceless characters he goes up against. If I have any complaint it is that the story does get a little too dramatic in certain places. What is most fascinating about this book is the possibility that it could actually happen.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: Mayday is a very exciting book. For a novel on this kind of subject it is the best you will ever read. What I like about this book is they explain very well what is happening to flight 52 as it looses pressure and heads back to San Fransico. They also explain what is going through the minds on the people aboard the doomed airlines and the minds of the people on the ground. For a book that is not true they tried to keep it realistic from start to finish. If you decide to read this book make sure that you have plenty of time because once you start reading you will not want to put it down.
Rating: 
Summary: Oh, please! Gimme a break...
Review: I am a pilot! I should know! I start out this review saying this because that is how THEY start the book...Not with the first chapter, but with a shameless "About the Authors" section that is several pages long. This is usually put at the end of a book and is only a paragraph or two. I wish I would have noticed this when I picked this book up at the bookstore. Block says he "left college, and pursued his aviation career, joining the former Mohawk Airlines at age nineteen, becoming the youngest airline copilot in the United States." Oh, flight attendant, can you pass me a puke sack, please? First of all, I highly doubt this claim, as I hear this kind of thing too often. Secondly, who really cares? To get hired so young is LUCK, not skill, and it's not like getting hired that young was an amazing feat back then. How much flying experience do you think someone could have at age nineteen, anyway. But this does make for a nice segue to my next point, which is their awful stereotyping of the crew. Block has the guts to proclaim how young he was when he got hired, yet the "silver haired" stud Captain has to put up with the Playboy reading "new breed." ("He had little patience for the new breed. They had a job that was fifty times better than what had come before, yet they seemed to complain constantly. Did they realize that thirty years ago (he) had to hand-plot each and every route segment before climbing into the copilot's seat? Spoiled, (he) said to himself.") Good lord. If that weren't enough, the ending is entirely predictable. (...) Too bad, because DeMille fans rave about him constantly, and it'll be a while before I can come around to read his stuff. As for Block, I WON'T be wasting my time on his material again. If you want GOOD commercial aviation books, check out John Nance, especially Final Approach and The Last Hostage. EXCELLENT, accurate details about commercial aviation, good plots, great characters. Things THIS book is seriously lacking.
Rating:
Summary: Mayday: A terrific cliffhanger
Review: Mayday is an excellent novel portraying a surreal incident in which John Berry, an inexperienced pilot, must take control over a Straton 797 and land it to safety. Nelson DeMille writes this novel using the third person omniscient point of view to explain to the reader the situation of not just John Berry, but workers in the Trans-United Airline dispatching office at San Francisco International Airport, as well as commanders on the aircraft carrier Nimitz. Conflict arises when Lieutenant Matos, military aircraft pilot, accidentally fires a military drone into the side of the Straton 797, causing complete decompression throughout the aircraft. When both Trans-United Airline and Commander Stuart (commander on the aircraft carrier) are informed of the status of the Straton, they feel that the tragedy will bring a mass media coverage. They decide that it would be best if they could somehow bring down the aircraft into the Pacific Ocean without anybody knowing about it so attention wouldn't be brought to them. The unpredictable yet fulfilling ending creates an exciting novel from beginning to end. By developing such an in depth plot and describing events in such detail, Nelson DeMille makes Mayday and excellent story for the reader who enjoys and action-packed, suspenseful novel.
Rating:
Summary: Mayday - An Aviation Thriller
Review: This is fairly early Demille with more emphgasis on technology than character. In the preface, Demille tells us that Thomas Block provided the technical details. There are some errors of fact which I know as a pilot, but suspend your disbelief and enjoy a good read! Some loose ends regarding the characters are not neatly tied, but I didn't really care. This book is a lot of fun with several different antagonists (some really surprising) and a lot of "What if?" science. If you are not interested in flying or navigation this is probably not for you, but in view of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the story is more timely now than it was when written.
Rating: 
Summary: Early, underwritten work by great action author
Review: Nelson DeMille is one of my three or four favorite authors. He passed Tom Clancy and John Grisham some time ago. DeMille writes with an almost frantic pace, using regular guy heroes who emerge from the ruins of tragedy or terror. "Mayday", about a jet airliner accidentally damaged by a missle over the Pacific, offered DeMille an early chance to develop his style. Placing almost al of the action in the fuselage of the damaged plane limits his stage. The details of decompression at high altitude are not pretty. The male and female leads are heroic. The victimized pilot of the fighter that fired the deadly shot is a good, if side story. The conclusions are somewhat predictable. I finished with small disappointment, having read much of his later work earlier.
Rating:
Summary: A First-Rate Thriller
Review: If you want a genuine thriller, this is for you. During an illegal missile test by the US Navy, a missile without a warhead passes through the body of a new transpacific airliner flying at 60,000 feet. Explosive decompression and prolonged anoxia kills or mentally unbalances the flight crew and passengers. A private pilot and a flight attendant face the almost impossible task of getting the huge plane back to San Francisco and landing it. Their task is made worse when the naval officer in charge of the test wants to cover his mistake by shooting down the airliner, and a company vice president tries to avoid massive liability by duping the inexperienced pilot into crashing into the ocean. The suspense never stops, and the horrors mount in a story that should keep you turning those pages.
Rating:
Summary: Non-stop Thrills
Review: Unlike Mr."Pacifictitle," I enjoyed "Mayday" far more than DeMille's "Plum Island." Though I would agree that character development is not as strong as in other DeMille novels, "Mayday" is a rollercoaster of a novel that was written with the description of "page turner" in mind. Since reading this book several years back, I've recommended it to many friends and all agree that it is great entertainment. This would make a terrific movie in entrusted to the right filmmaker!
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