No Highway, Neville Shute

[watervole]

 This is  well written book, and I really liked some of the characters.  It's set firmly in Shute's own field of expertise, with the main character, Mr Honey, doing a long term study on stress fractures in aircraft. He's very wrapped up in the technical aspect of his work, and tends to not notice much in the real world.

But when his boss realises that there may be aircraft flying that are within Mr Honey's predicted time of failure, then things start to get complicated.

 

The reason I can't give this book more than three out of five stars, is because I cannot accept a plot that relies on a planchette as a plot device.

 

(It's possible that Shute believed in such things himself, but I don't.)

 

You can get it free from Faded Page.

Comments

[igenlode]

I have zero trouble with the supernatural in books (it bemused me as a child why my mother found to impossible to swallow the existence of the family telepathic gift in Mary Stewart's "Touch Not The Cat", for instance, despite her being a big fan of the author's other books; but then I was happily reading science-fiction, and she found that completely silly and implausible as well...)

I have to say that I don't remember a planchette featuring anywhere in this one! What I do remember is the tension when they realise mid-flight that this particular airframe has done far more air-miles than any of the the others; a classic example of how to write a thriller in which on the surface nothing actually happens. And oddly enough my most vivid little memory is of the American stewardess calling the child Elspeth "honey", and the girl being offended at being addressed by her surname ;-)

[watervole]

I don't mind telepathy so much. I regard it as putting the novel in the 'fantasy' category.

What I dislike is 'fantasy' in a book that is otherwise hard science.

The planchette (used by Elspeth) was how they found the wreckage of the Reindeer that crashed. 'Under the bear's paw'

Like you, I Like Shute's way of writing where nothing obvious is happening.

I loved the stewardess, and I felt so sorry for Monica Teasdale (the actress who also fell for Mr Honey).