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Title: crash and burn.
Review: I have read other Crichton novels, but this is the first one I had to abandon after only 40 pages. The 'info-dumping' was painful, the characterisation was crass ( a redhead with a fiery temper? How does he think of these things?) and the subject, for a thriller, was mundane. But it was the casual racism which pushed this reviewer over the edge. Crichtons' insights into the minds of the Vietnamese Americans ("Quiet, self-contained..hard-working")or Chinese("great attention to detail") made me wonder about the rest of his legendary research skills. If you can't trust a writer to describe things you know with any realism, then you can't trust him when it comes to imparting esoteric knowlege about aircraft engineering, for example. Crichton is a fantastically successful writer. He does not need to write for a living any more. The biggest mystery about 'Airframe' is, why did he bother? Michael, baby, take a break.
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