Tracon (edition 2000)

Of all the pure thrillers I've read (i.e. with not too much, or no mystery) this one had very little thriller to it.

Honestly I wasn't sure what the plot was, even at the end of the book. But the main event of the story was a plane crash. But, that didn't take place until what felt like more than halfway into the book. Needless to say the beginning really dragged on.

The main character, Ryan Kelly, was okay-ly written. Wasn't perfect, but wasn't so flawed to be unbelievable. The other characters, such as Christy, JJ, Bear were also written fine, nothing special. The place that it broke down was in some of the descriptions. The ones that related to the romantic, thriller storyline were very trite and pedestrian. And the descriptions that were about the air traffic controlling, being in TRACON or in a plane or wherever, those seemed to be out of some sort of ATC manual or something.

Anyway, it wasn't really a surprising plot, and there wasn't much suspense. It wasn't horribly written, just not as well written as, say, [Crashers] by Dana Haynes which was the book that spurred LibraryThing to recommend Tracon to me. Guess I'll have to enter this two stars and the rec. algorithm will be enriched. ( )

Entertaining, although reads like a first novel. Dialog is confusing in places, and it feels like a little too much was crammed into the plot. However I felt like I had an insider's view of the world of air traffic controllers. Others--more knowledgeable in this area than I--seem to agree on this latter point. ( )

In that I seem to be one of the few that have read it...

I reviewed the book on Amazon after it was first published.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3QW6XU4TIV9A5/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-10...

Although it's a novel (and a good one) Paul McElroy has done a better job of capturing the truth of air traffic control than anyone I've read. And I've tried to read all the books about air traffic control.

Educating and entertaining. It's my favorite kind of book.

Don Brown
http://gettheflick.blogspot.com/ ( )