The Downing of Flight Six Heavy

Veteran commercial pilot Captain Mike Hutcherson reluctantly takes on a secret mission--supposedly at the behest of the CIA--to deliver a plane and its top-secret cargo to England, but the flight disappears en route to its destination

In this debut techno-thriller, an innocuous gadget--a laser-interceptor that disrupts the guidance systems of low-altitude, tactical missiles--sets off a series of deadly events. The villain is the CIA--here a swamp of voyeurs, moles, double agents and bureaucrats ready to sanction murder in order to preserve the Company's reputation. When the CIA commandeers a commercial jet to deliver the laser to Europe, Captain Leonard Hutcherson finds his crew and passengers at risk for the sake of a national security threatened more by its guardians than by its enemies. TV director and producer Lafferty writes crisp dialogue and deftly handles the aircraft background. But he fails to make credible his major premise: that experienced intelligence officers would arrange the public disappearance of a commercial airplane. Despite some effective individual episodes and a cast of well-drawn characters, this novel never leaves the runway.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Making the CIA the villain, Lafferty neatly turns the tables on hijack thrillers. A gullible captain is recruited to divert a 747 airliner secretly to a remote area. When the plot goes fearsomely awry, he exacts his revenge and manages--like a hero from Alistair Maclean--to return and tell his story. In his first novel, Lafferty meticulously lays out the controlled world of the cockpit and, in contrast, the helpless desperation of the passengers. The book's most entertaining aspect is the total immersion into the world of aviation, where, despite fancy instruments and charts, characters still barely navigate the shoals of human emotion and treachery. Don't recommend this empyrean suspense to first-time fliers, but others can trust the autopilot for a flight into distraction.
- Barbara Conaty, Library of Congress
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.