Mayday

Title: Mayday (1998)  
Author: Nelson DeMille // Thomas Block  
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing  

Book jacket: Twelve miles above the Pacific Ocean, a missile strikes a jumbo passenger jet. The flight crew is crippled or dead. Now, defying both nature and man, three survivors must achieve the impossible. Land the plane.

Joe says: Missing from this read is breathable air, believable dialogue, and pretty much any of the usual DeMille convenience.

The story behind the story is probably known well enough by now. Thomas Block, pilot by day, writer by night, pens an air flight disaster novel back in the seventies with the help of his good friend, and superstar novelist in the making, Nelson DeMille. The story is a success and twenty plus years later, DeMille does a re-write to bring the tale into modern times, or at least modern by late 20th-Century standards. Here’s the kick, though, DeMille gets top billing on the re-release… and partner, a DeMille book this ain’t.

The airline disaster plot is a fun, quick read but Block provides plenty of tech speak and filler that could even get diehard Clancy fans reaching for their air masks. Plot complications involving a secret and illegal Navy operation as well as a corrupt and vain insurance agent, quickly set the boundaries on the good being heroic and the evil being dirty and the cliché ruling throughout. However, when oxygen deprivation makes most of the passengers the Walking Dead, this reader quickly wanted to jump ship as amateur pilot and protagonist John Berry is no Rick Grimes.

Nor is he John Corey. Or even John Sutter. Missing throughout the entire book is a complete absence of that DeMille sarcasm. Also missing is anything that remotely passes for believable dialogue, posing the conspiring question whether DeMille really performed a rewrite, or did he simply remove references to in-flight smoking and add the occasional mobile phone appearance.

The star and hero of the book, John Berry, likewise only gets adequate play as far as character development goes, including a half-contrived rocky marriage to deliberately stumble over as he is forced to team-up with a beautiful, and single, stewardess. Mayday has all the makings of a late 20th Century made-for-TV movie… which is exactly what happened.