A big airplane deal with the chinese looming in the distant and a problem abored a Norton-22 causes a few fatalities and 56 injuries jeopardizing the sale. Follow the intrigue as the mystery as to how this happend unfolds.

Classic Crichton picking a topic and showing a side no one ever thinks to look at. I really enjoyed it although some spots get a little technical for a little too long. Overall good solid read. ( )

Non all'altezza della fama dell'autore. Si fa leggere velocemente ma non è mai avvincente e appasionato come la maggior parte dei suoi libri. ( )

This is one of my least favorite Michael Crichton novels. The story wasn't bad, just technical in a way that was less entertaining and interesting than most of his other novels. The mechanics of airplane design and engineering was informative but very much too confusing to follow. The character interaction in this novel was less compelling than in his other novels and was overshadowed by the mechanical description. I have yet to read a bad Michael Crichton novel. Airframe was just lesser than some of his better, more famous novels. ( )

This is an interesting look in how an airline must figure out why a plane crashed and keep the media from destroying their image. What I find very interesting is that this novel was written right when 24 hour news media was in its infancy. It seems almost prophetic of how news is presented today. ( )

Based on the plot blurb on the jacket, this didn't sound like one of Crichton's best novels, so I put off reading it for years. Now I wish I hadn't. Airframe stands up with his best. A story of corporate politics, union violence, bureaucratic b.s., and media responsibility (or the lack thereof), Airframe weaves all of these elements into a seamless whole.

Casey Singleton is a single mom, and a vice-president of quality assurance at Norton, one of the world's top (and few remaining) manufacturers of airframes (i.e., the body of an airplane, but not the engines). With a terrible but inexplicable accident threatening to upset a vital deal, it's up to her to get to the bottom of what actually happened in order to prove that the model of the plane is safe and reliable. But the union, afraid that jobs are going to be outsourced, will go to any lengths to stop the deal, and that means derailing Casey's investigation. Plus, it seems like there may be someone in upper management working against her as well. On top of all this, Casey is appointed as the company's liaison with the media about the incident. Can she deal with a violent union, back-stabbing co-workers, irresponsible journalists, senseless bureaucracy, and still solve the mystery in time?

As usual, Crichton puts in enough technical detail to make the story seem hyper-real, but not quite enough to bore the reader with minutiae entirely irrelevant to the story. And unlike some of his more science-fictiony stuff, this novel is firmly in the realism camp, along with some of his other better novels (Disclosure and The Great Train Robbery come to mind).

A couple of minor drawbacks: Some of the characters are a bit thinly drawn, for instance the upper-level management of the company, whom Crichton portrays as very hard workers in a sort of vague way but who we otherwise have no idea how they got where they are. And he treats some of his subject matter a bit inconsistently, for instance having a character who appears to be speaking for the author insist that federal regulation is the only way to ensure that corporations make safe products, but then showing regulatory agencies basically just getting in the way with a bunch of useless red tape and showing very clearly that the company's real motivation to put out a safe product is so they can actually sell it and make money off of it and not go out of business and all be out of jobs.

But these are fairly minor issues in the novel. Overall, it's a great read, and I highly recommend it. ( )