TOUCH THE SKY

by Harold Livingston ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 1991

A tough, shrewd pilot survives WW I and goes on to build airplanes, getting tougher, shrewder, and, of course, much richer in the process. Here, Livingston gives the aerospace industry the same treatment he gave organized crime in Ride A Tiger (1987). Readers are asked to admire rather than like the exceptionally able aviator Simon Conway, who takes the Vince Lombardi approach to aerial combat rather than follow the gentlemanly, unwritten rules adhered to by his French superiors and German enemies as they duke it out over the trenches. Conway fights hard and fights to win, but every now and then a little gallantry slips out--as it does, for example, when he rescues the Kaiser's leading ace from a burning plane. He's also got a secret soft spot in his otherwise flinty heart, a weakness for a sexy Parisian chanteuse. Those relatively human touches aside, Conway is very much the heartless American industrialist, picking up useful business associates rather than friends as he puts together a company to rival Boeing, Douglas, and the other giants of the 20th-century air-industry. There is a wife, there are children, but Conway's heart belongs to the radial air-cooled engines, pressurized cabins, flaps, rudders, and the memory of the French singer--who makes a brief, suitably tragic reappearance in WW II. Intermittently interesting dramatization of an important industry--all hampered by a no-doubt realistic but still quite unpleasant protagonist.

Pub Date: April 18, 1991

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Morrow

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1991

Categories: FICTION