Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
|
Loading... Crashers (edition 2011)by Dana Haynes
Work InformationCrashers by Dana Haynes
  
ALA The Reading List (404) No current Talk conversations about this book.  settingshadow | Aug 19, 2023 |    ) walterhpdx | Jan 17, 2018 |  ) Michelle_Wendt | Jun 15, 2016 | This book is great for the arm-chair detective as the FBI becomes involved in the investigation after it is determined that the plane was sabotaged, because one of them may be a mole. There is plenty of technical jargon for geeks and Haynes does a good job of building believable characters. Throw in an Irish radical group and a former Israeli intelligence agent and you have one who-do-you-trust classic. A very minor flaw is that there are a couple of situations where you have to suspend your disbelief at the coincidences but otherwise there is so much excitement and surprises I’m willing to overlook this. My jaw actually dropped when I read the last sentences of the first chapter. There are other places where I had to wail, “Noooo!” You can never tell what is going to happen next. If you like a fast-paced thriller, I highly recommend CRASHERS! ( ) BooksOn23rd | Nov 25, 2015 | ) librarymary09 | May 24, 2014 |
 "Crashers" by Portland author Dana Haynes is a widescreen, high-concept action thriller centered on a team of airplane crash investigators -- the National Transportation Safety Board's "Go-Team." In the novel's opening sequence a passenger jetliner, headed south out of PDX, suffers a sudden and fatal mysterious failure. Dr. Tommy Tomzak, a pathologist and ex-crash investigator, is first on the scene at the debris-littered crash site, a grass field alongside Interstate 5. He organizes the rescue of the survivors while establishing all the proper protocols for the investigation that he knows is to come. Tomzak is drawn back into working for the NTSB as lead investigator. The rest of the team rushes in, racing to gather all the physical evidence of the crash before anything is lost. Tomzak struggles with his memories of a past failure as lead investigator and with the presence of an old lover on his team. Even though readers know who caused the crash and how (though not why), it is interesting to see how the team of crashers operates, systematically re-creating and examining every particle of the disaster -- even charting the course of shrapnel through the bodies of all the passengers. The mechanics of this kind of investigation have a lot of intrinsic interest. Haynes, veteran of a number of Oregon newspaper gigs, marshals the big picture and the details of the investigation vividly. It's a subject with a good deal of emotional traction -- with all our collective post-9/11 anxieties still hanging over the business of air travel. The dynamics of a large-scale investigation, by a team of driven experts, begins to get some promising examination before being swept away by the needs of a broad-stroke thriller plot. The novel's secondary plot plays out in Los Angeles and involves a gang of thuggish Irish-Protestant terrorists. A headstrong Israeli ex-spy named Daria Gibron impulsively infiltrates the terrorists, helping them to elude the authorities while sending secret messages to her emotionally involved FBI handler. As things progress Gibron proves to be a kind of unstoppable super-spy along the lines of Jason Bourne. Carefully staged scenes of crashing airplanes, crashing cars, blazing guns and hand-to-hand combat increase as Haynes shepherds us toward the inevitable Hollywood finish. With each new big sequence and thoroughly telegraphed plot twist, readers will find themselves picturing this as a summer blockbuster movie played out on the page. The stock villains and the easily resolved personal conflicts of the heroes solidify the feeling that this book absolutely embraces all the movie-based clichés of the genre. Those seeking diverting, but low impact, summertime beach reading may appreciate how Haynes has balanced all these predictable elements with aplomb, moving along the action and the large cast of uncomplicated characters with clockwork perfection. The story reaches the inevitable action climax with all just deserts and happy endings achieved in proper proportion. Belongs to SeriesCrashers Series (1) Awards
When a passenger plane, a Vermeer One Eleven, slams into the ground outside Portland, Oregon, a team--the "crashers"-- is quickly assembled to investigate the cause. Usually the team has months to determine the cause of a crash. But this time it's different. This time, the plane was brought down deliberately, without leaving a trace, and this was only a trial run. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumDana Haynes's book Crashers was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers.  Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.58)
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Wikipedia in English
6
And that's where the praise ends. This reads like a script for a summer movie or a CSI "Special Episode." It is filled with an appropriately diverse cast (for some, unknown, reason the ethnic background of even the most trivial of characters is given. While the supporting cast contains a Korean man, three African Americans, a Brit, an Israeli, a handful of Irish men, an Arab American and an Asian American, the main cast is white -- very TV.) More time is spent describing how beautiful, handsome, rugged and sexy each character is than really giving any personality, which makes it difficult to tell who's talking without dialogue tags.
The action is really designed to be cinematic. I had a lot of fun picturing in my head how the scenes would look, but there aren't really any twists to engage the imagination of the reader.
But, where the Crashers really falls down is the writing. As I said, the plot is fun, the characters are pretty, there's lots of action, overall it would be about as enjoyable as a weak Dan Brown novel, if not for the terrible writing. To be fair, I received an advance copy, which I assume (from the number of typos) is still undergoing some editing. That being said, the dangling participles, heavy handed dialogue-tagging and awkward exposition and narration were so distracting that finishing the book was a chore that I completed because I got the book from First Reads. Had I bought the book, I probably would have given up on it. (