Customer Reviews

Final Approach

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

John Nance continues to impress me, and "Final Approach" only solidifies that. The book kept me picking it up and reading it when I should have been doing other things. His insight into the avaiation industry is amazing, and his ability to bring that insight out in a fictional novel is superb. People interested in the "behind the scenes" of airlines, the NTSB, FAA, and Washington will enjoy the plot.

Final Appoach is a good book. I was intrested in the book but not that intrested. I had read Pandoras Clock and Medusa's Child also by John J. Nance beore Final Approach I was not as intriqued as I was before by the other two. However I found this book very satisfying. It had lots of governments coverups. I think Nance does great research. His book was great. Every aspect of the plane is descriped. You just can't find better books Nance it the greatest author ever!

After reading Nance's thrillers, such as Pandora's Clock and Medusa's Child, this book was a major dissapointment when I finally forced myself to read it. It started out excellent, with a very good crash scene. However, by the middle, continuing through the end, no action occured at all. It is a book that can educate you on the inside of the FAA, NTSB, and airline industries, but if you want action, this book will leave you feeling deflated.

Author Nance is a well-seasoned commercial aviator. He also writes a good yarn in Final Approach. Though not as captivating as Trevanian and Ludlum, he does do an outstanding job in capturing the mind-set of a pilot, the main character (his own Jack Ryan?). Much better than Pandora's Clock (one of his other novels). Technically on-target and accurate with virtually all aspects to aviation and NTSB accident investigations: other authors shouldn't even try to dignify this sacred realm as well as Nance respects it and writes of it. Forget the Dinosaurs and Hollywood, put yourself on a real flight deck for a night or two with Final Approach.

"Final Approach" follows the fictional investigation of an air disaster in Kansas, an idea that promises explosive tension, and then punks out. This is because "Final Approach" is simply an example of the sort of thrillers to be churned out in the information age, where the heroes and villains are just bureaucrats. By the time we've finished "Final Approach", flying remains an experience as alien as when the book opens, but now we've become smarter in the bureaucratci workings of the FAA and NTSB among others, not to mention that the government hides information (huh? ) and that the media will exploit stories for their ratings value rather than invetsigate them (no way! ). Even as a bureaucratic-mystery, "Final Approach" fails. Though the heroes are meant to represent the most efficient resources the government can use to prove the cause of the fatal crash, the solution is not revealed by intelligent ivestigators and dogged investigation, but because somebody just gives up and blabs the truth. The conspiracy theories and hysteria by which the author condescends to non-experts (The media is bad for feeding us stories it can't really stand by, and we're bad for accepting it so easily) make it convenient for his protagonists to look busy, even as they remain oblivious to the truth. Anybody could have solved this mystery.

With less than twenty-five pages into the book, I had to stop and get a box of tissues as Mr. Nance had painted the details of the crash in such gripping details that it seemed like I was walking through the victims. Especially when the husband that was watching through the window of the boarding area rushed out and found his wife and two young children in the smoking ruins and then . . .

The protagonist, Joe Wallingford, is the lead investigator for the National Transportation and Safety Board and has to determine the cause of the crash. Was it sabotage, wind-sheer, human error, or mechanical failure that caused the landing plane to slice into the plane waiting to take off? All of these are possibilities according to Nance's well crafted prose with twists and turns all the way to the very surprising conclusion.

Why not five stars for such a book? That would have elevated it to Medusa's Child and Pandora's Clock and they both were a notch above this novel. Nance is my favorite author as I like aviation thrillers and most of his books are five stars.

Author al-Qaeda Strikes Again

I have read other Nance books ("Medusa's Child" and "Pandora's Clock") and found them to be much more intriguing and exciting than this snoozer. I kept waiting for some incredible, exciting event or revelation to occur in "Final Approach" but it never did. I had to force myself to read many parts of the book, which I have rarely had to do with other novels.

... because I love airplanes. Other than that, a reader with average intelligence will always be two steps ahead of this rather predictable tale. However, Mr. Nance has a lot of insight into how the aviation industry is regulated, and it was a pleasure to read a novel written by somebody knowledgable about the inner workings of the FAA and airlines.

This is perhaps my favorite John Nance novel. Of course, I love the attention to detail he gives the airline industry - he is a pilot, after all.

Final approach gives drama to an aircraft accident investigation and still finds the emotion involved too. The irony of many investigations and Nance finds this in Approach as well is that the true cause is often not dramatic at all, but the outcome is still deadly.

Nance almost entices me into quitting the pilot job and becoming an accident investigator.

John J. Nance continues to delight aviation fans with novels set amidst the workings of the airline industry. He knows the territory - he's a decorated Air Force pilot - one you may have seen as an analyst on the TV networks. In "Final Approach," he first applied his working knowledge of the skies to the pages of a suspense novel.

On a stormy night at a major Midwestern airport, a jetliner comes in short and slices into another airliner waiting for takeoff - a disaster of major proportions.

Joe Wallingford is an investigator for the National Transportation and Safety Board, the group that determines the causes of accidents, and his group gets the call to find out if the crash was the result of the storm, human error, sabotage, or mechanical failure. It reads like CSI: Airport.

Nance provides plausible circumstances for each of the possibilities. A person aboard the flight had enemies, a top-secret government project was being moved at the airport, the airline appears to be covering for the pilot's health, and the storm had already produced several near-crashes.

During his investigation, Wallingford and his NTSB crew face cover-ups by the government, the airline, and even his coworkers. To top it off, his boss is a political appointee whose meddling threatens the objectivity of the probe.

Unfortunately, few industries have undergone changes like the airlines, and some action in "Final Approach" reads like Stone Age fiction - nervous passengers sneak smokes and unticketed family members board the plane to tuck children into their seats. To his credit, Nance provides such compelling characters that it is easy to overlook the dated aspects.

His later works provide more action, and "Final Approach" reads like a police procedural compared to his later-released "Orbit." Either way, it's high-flying fun with John Nance at the controls.