Bird Watcher: A Novel

Who is the bird watcher and why does he steal airplanes? A terrorist, or is he?

When Jerry Christensens Cessna disappears from its tie-down at Palo Alto Airporta small white airplane with a thousand clones and a hundred places to hideAir Traffic Control cant help, and the FBI isnt interested. Jerry, a schoolteacher, is unsuited to pursue a criminal but determines to catch the thief himself. He acts on hunches and makes outrageous planshis imagination and his background as a pilot his only weapons against serial aircraft thefts and a conspiracy against Hoover Dam. Will Jerry stop the thief in time?

Marjorie Bicknell Johnson taught mathematics for twenty-five years before she became a pilot, and she published ninety mathematical papers before she wrote a novel. She and her husband Frank live in Santa Clara, California; they have four children.

Marjorie and her husband fly their own small airplane out of Palo Alto Airport, the setting for Bird Watcher. Like many other pilots, Marjorie learned to fly in a Cessna 172. She has landed at every small airport mentioned in Bird Watcher.