All Fall Down

Rating:
Summary: This Book Rocks!!
Review: Lee Gruenfeld displays superb writing skills in All Fall Down. Two outstanding examples, one an action scene and one a quietly dynamic domestic spat, illustrate this point. The action scene, a literary gem, depicts Commander Jack Webster attempting to talk a crippled jet fighter back to a safe landing on the carrier during the season's worst storm. That one incident by itself would make a hit TV movie. The other scene portrays a bewildered Webster weathering a marital storm following a seemingly innocent remark. Who of us--married or single--cannot relate to that?

The two scenes are examples of what is meant by a character driven, rather than a plot driven, novel. Neither advances the plot line, yet both scenes give us insights into the character of the chief protagonist, thus making his decisions not merely understandable, but coldly logical.

The occasional flyer isadvised to read this novel AFTER his/her next planned flight. In All Fall Down a disgruntled psychopath, a genious in computer programming, extorts millions of dollars by threatening to blow passenger airliners out of the sky. This all-too-possible scenario brings in not only airline management, but the full force of the United States government: air traffic control, the FBI, and all other bureaus related to passenger safety. The climatic scene of the novel covers 15 minutes of real time. Gruenfeld uses some thirty pages to narrate it, not one paragraph of which is superfluous . Writing does not come much better than this.

Speed readers may be put off by the somewhat ;pedantic writing style of Gruenfeld. His low-key narration is somewhat remindful of erudite--though still interesting--professors in the lecture classroom. Speed readers in this case should slow down and smell the coffee.

Rating:
Summary: Slipping the surly bonds of earth sometimes not a good idea
Review: Lee Gruenfeld displays superb writing skills in All Fall Down. Two outstanding examples, one an action scene and one a quietly dynamic domestic spat, illustrate this point. The action scene, a literary gem, depicts Commander Jack Webster attempting to talk a crippled jet fighter back to a safe landing on the carrier during the season's worst storm. That one incident by itself would make a hit TV movie. The other scene portrays a bewildered Webster weathering a marital storm following a seemingly innocent remark. Who of us--married or single--cannot relate to that?

The two scenes are examples of what is meant by a character driven, rather than a plot driven, novel. Neither advances the plot line, yet both scenes give us insights into the character of the chief protagonist, thus making his decisions not merely understandable, but coldly logical.

The occasional flyer isadvised to read this novel AFTER his/her next planned flight. In All Fall Down a disgruntled psychopath, a genious in computer programming, extorts millions of dollars by threatening to blow passenger airliners out of the sky. This all-too-possible scenario brings in not only airline management, but the full force of the United States government: air traffic control, the FBI, and all other bureaus related to passenger safety. The climatic scene of the novel covers 15 minutes of real time. Gruenfeld uses some thirty pages to narrate it, not one paragraph of which is superfluous . Writing does not come much better than this.

Speed readers may be put off by the somewhat ;pedantic writing style of Gruenfeld. His low-key narration is somewhat remindful of erudite--though still interesting--professors in the lecture classroom. Speed readers in this case should slow down and smell the coffee.

Rating:
Summary: Human characters, interwoven with a terrifying threat.
Review: Someone has decided to blackmail the government for $5 million. But the piddling size of the demand is only one of the side questions. Who it is, is another side question. The main question for the National Transportation Safety Board task group, is how the terrorist can cause the onboard instruments of a major airliner to lie to the pilots and aim the plane directly toward a mountain, when it is supposed to be on final approach to land at an airfield five miles away. Because that's what he has done once. Than allowing the crew to recover, before a crash occurred, as an example of his ability. The next time, the crew and passengers may never know that they're to die.

Rating:
Summary: There's no doubting what crashed this book
Review: This book is unbelievable - and not in the good way either. A team of government investigators searches for a shadowy genius capable of altering flight-navigation systems used by most large airliners, and obviously capable of bringing them all down. (When the mystery hacker blackmails the government, a few crashed planes are tossed in as a convincer.) Meanwhile, we meet Bo Kincaid, a grizzled veteran fighter pilot whose mastery in the air survived several wars abroad and incipient racism at home. Much of Bo exists as no more than flashbacks that occur thruought the book, and lack any apparent connection to the underlying story - flying Mustangs with the Tuskegee Airmen in WWII and Phantoms over Vietnam. In between learning of Bo's life, the reader watches the fitful and unproductive search for the extortionist whom investigators soon label "Captain Marvel". The investigators quickly hit on Florence Hartzig as the perfect expert to trap Marvel, but can never seem to locate her.

It would be generous to say that this book crashes and burns - generous because that implies that it ever got off the ground. Nothing much happens, but we're supposed to think that the author has done her homework and crafted expert characters, even as they don't do much during most of the story. (the author spends more time showing us how smart they are than he does having them get to the bottom of the mystery; in short, he spends so much time making them all geniuses, that he never makes them convincingly smart). We get the usual cast of characters - brainy and brawny hunks who know the system and how to work around it, and the rest (stand ins for us) as the idiots who'd be lost without them. Author Lee Gruenfeld puts her heroes' experience solving a myriad of issues both relevant (how airliners navigate, how extortionists use ATM machines) and otherwise (why Psychics aren't as reliable as they appear; why the media was wrong when it chastised the government over the Pentagon's $60 hammer). "All", more than many other books, is painfully in love with its sheer gobs of useless knowledge irrelevant to advancing the plot or developing the characters who wade through it. Unlike a really good book that grabs a hold of you from the first page, "All Fall Down" is sort of like some annoying guy you'll meet on an airplane and won't let go until you've heard everything he thinks about every subject he knows.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Rocks!!
Review: This is one satisfying read. I really wanted to give it almost 4 1/2 stars. It's very well written, and maintains a steady, but intense pace. The character development is excellent, as are the twists and turns that kept me guessing. It's one book that leaves you feeling full, like you've just eaten a tremendously good meal, and when it's done, you won't feel cheated by some lame ending like many other books have.