I remember when John Barry Smith (the cargo door guy) said that a
missile or other criminal or conspiracy theory was intesresting to
people, but there were no novels about mechanical failure. That was not
true of course. Michael Crichton had written one, called Airframe.
Then later I heard about this 20-year old novel (recently rewritten
apparently) by Thomas Bolton that involved a misisle hitting an airplane
in the plot.
Later on, I mentioned Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which is
basocally about a missile (called in Star Trek a torpedo) allegedly
fored from the Enterprise. That also contains some similiarity to the
Ron Brown allegations, in that some strangers come aboard and shoot.
I was in a library branch yesterday that had lots of novels (many
mysteries) for sale. They were all mostly not very old at all.
There I saw a book about an airplane crash with an unusual twist
to some - the motive has some similiarity to what I think may be true,
in that the target is the plane itself and I thought it might be
interesting to mention it. It was published before the TWA jet crash.
It is called The Last High Ground and is by Robin A. White (Crown
Publisher's 1995)
I ran across this book maybe because unlike most of the others, the
binding was broken in two, and then noticed - that's about an airplane
crash that sounds a little bit like what I havw to say about TWA
Flight 800. Now I don't think anything like this exactly has happened
This is what the dust jacket:
® The Last High Ground
IMAGINE: The worst airline disaster of the century.
IMAGINE: America's preemient aerospace firm targeted for takeover by
a shadowy Japanese organization.
IMAGINE: One man thinks there is a connection but no one will listen.
*I know why our aircraft are going down* reads the cryotic note left
by a disgraced employee of America's leading aircraft manufacturer.
But for the passengers and crew of Flight 262, a brand-new aircraft,
it comes too late. The worst aviation disaster in U.S. history is
about to take place.
Reaching from the deathbed of Japan's most notorious organized crime
boss to terror 40,000 feet above the Rocky Mountains, a scheme of
unparalleled subtlety ÄÄ and brutality ÄÄ unfolds. Its target: thd
hostile takeover and control of the greatest aircraft manufacturer
in the United States and ultimately the control of the entire world's
aerospace industry.
Three men hold pieces of the puzzle linking this scheme with the two
fatal air crashes. Roger Case is a lawyer specializing in aviation
litigation. Brian MacHenry is a freelance airline accident investigator.
And the most unlikely member of the trio is a young Japanese policeman
named Shig Onishi. They must join forces to unravel a conspiracy and
and save a great American corporation ÄÄ a takeover that could shake
the world's two greatest economies to their very foundations. ¯
He evidentally wrote a number of novels and is a pilot.
Of course nothing like this happened here - but some aspect of this
*was* anticipated.
he novel mentions the Gander, Newfoundland crash, but does not really
track the developments in the case , that is there was no such lawsuit,
I think, as the one mentioned in it.
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