Tracon

After reading this book it's hard to believe that it was a debut novel. It's well-written, has a number of fleshed-out characters, plus several interesting sidebars that keep the plot moving forward.
The book revolves around the life of air traffic controller, Ryan Kelly, and many of his colleagues. These are the people who have the lives of thousands of travelers in their hands every single day.
Kelly is an integral part of a mid-air disaster that kills hundreds over Chicago. Kelly and a fellow controller are blamed for the accident even though it's clear to the controllers that a faulty computer collision prevention program is to blame. The controllers fight an uphill battle to clear their names and get the computer program taken show more offline before future disasters occur.
Author Paul McElroy spins a memorable story that fully opens up the stressful world of air traffic controlling to readers. show less

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 show more 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. show less

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/