Crash Dive [Paperback]

John McKinna (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

Commerical deep-sea diver Ben Gannon has been assigned to retrieve the bodies from a helicopter crash in the Gulf of Mexico. Instead he discovers the bullet-ridden bodies of the "crash" victims, among them a senator who championed American oil independence. The helicopter was returning from a highly-advanced oil rig, where Gannon suddenly finds himself assigned to work. But when the rig is seized by Middle Eastern terrorists, he decides to take matters into his own hands....

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Onyx (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451408853
• ISBN-13: 978-0451408853
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,441,512 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars CRASH DIVE SOARS!, August 28, 2000

By 

Apollo Reader (Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crash Dive (Paperback)

Thanks to Amazon.com for even getting me interested in this book as well as all the reviewers that caught my attention. This debut book by McKinna was a treasure find! I am not a diver and did not quite understand all of the diving and sailing stuff but it was a relentless action/adventure story with some good surprises - and I like that! The characters were well written and I felt like I was kind of reading a well made action movie in the tradition of DIE HARD in the diver's seat, so to speak. I like Ben Gannon and his woman Sass, and the cajun friend Rolly was fun to follow. The bad guys were bad and colorful and Sligo was exhausting to read with his constant cocaine snorting and relentless smuggler's smack. The story and action were very fun to read and I already bought the next book - TIGER REEF, and will be reviewing that in about a week. Great debut Mr. McKinna and am looking forward to your next book. Good luck!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book in a Great Series!, February 3, 2005

By 

Fred Ackton - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crash Dive (Paperback)

As a diver, I really loved Crash Dive and the other two books in this diving adventure series, Tiger Reef and Shark Lake. These are really superior underwater thrillers, and I'd recommend them to anyone who likes diving and high adventure (I don't know what the reviewer before me is talking about--he sounds like a bitter crank who can't get his own work published to me). John McKinna is really great writer who knows how to spin a great yarn with excellent characters and action. Crash Dive is about a terrorist attack on a Gulf of Mexico oil rig, but it's also about Cuba, and a whacky drug smuggler who can't get out of his own way, and international politics, and a cool working-class hero (Ben Gannon, a commercial diver) and his 'way cool girlfriend "Sass". I think I'm in love with her. I loved McKinna's way with a story, and I've bought all his books since reading this one, including his World War Two novels under the pen name John Mannock, Iron Coffin and The Sen-Toku Raid. Do yourself a favor and check this author out, under either of his writing names, because he's very, very good. Ignore Cranky below--Crash Dive gets five very enthusiastic stars.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars John McKinna, aka "John Mannock"...Great writer!, August 5, 2004

By 

William Amherst - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crash Dive (Paperback)

John McKinna, who also writes WWII thrillers under the pen name "John Mannock", really produced a winner with this first novel in his seagoing thriller trilogy featuring intrepid, globe-trotting commercial diver Ben Gannon. Superior writing and a dry sense of humor are what distinguish CRASH DIVE and its two companion novels, TIGER REEF and SHARK LAKE. As a recreational diver myself, I found McKinna's technical knowledge (he was a commercial deep-sea diver himself for nearly 20 years) and characterizations (he's a genuinely gifted writer--more like Patrick O'Brian or Nicholas Monsarrat than some pulp hack) to be far better than those of, say, the ubiquitous Clive Cussler. McKinna's hero Ben Gannon is far more believable than Cussler's Dirk Pitt, who is something of a superman in skin-tight black rubber. Gannon is a regular guy with an uncommon amount of resourcefulness and adaptability, which makes him a good stand-in for the reader: you can easily imagine yourself in the dilemmas Gannon encounters, and enjoy beating the odds with him. McKinna's CRASH DIVE anticipated the terrorist attack on America by several years, the target in the novel being an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Prescient. The other two Gannon novels examine, with thrilling dramatic license, modern piracy in the Java Sea (TIGER REEF) and the violent dissolution of a small African country in the throes of revolution (SHARK LAKE). All are excellent reading. In addition, McKinna's IRON COFFIN (also available on Amazon), written under the pen name "John Mannock", is a superb WWII novel about a damaged German U-boat that occupied the Top Fifty Paperback Bestseller's List in the U.S. in the winter of 2004. If you want to read an excellent modern author's debut books, you can't go wrong with the Ben Gannon diving series. McKinna/"Mannock" is one of the very best.