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Shooting Script
Carr is flying a film company's plane around the Caribbean. The plane is an old war-time bomber, and Carr's job soon proves to be less peaceful than he expected. Gavin Lyall is an ex-RAF bomber, has spent four years writing for "The Sunday Times" and wrote his first thriller in 1961.
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
54 people are currently reading
101 people want to read
About the author
Gavin Lyall
66 books31 followersGavin was born and educated in Birmingham. For two years he served as a RAF pilot before going up to Cambridge, where he edited Varsity, the university newspaper. After working for Picture Post, the Sunday Graphic and the BBC, he began his first novel, The Wrong Side of the Sky, published in 1961. After four years as Air Correspondent to the Sunday Times, he resigned to write books full time. He was married to the well-known journalist Katherine Whitehorn and they lived in London with their children.
Lyall won the British Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger award in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. He was not a prolific author, attributing his slow pace to obsession with technical accuracy. According to a British newspaper, “he spent many nights in his kitchen at Primrose Hill, north London, experimenting to see if one could, in fact, cast bullets from lead melted in a saucepan, or whether the muzzle flash of a revolver fired across a saucer of petrol really would ignite a fire”.
He eventually published the results of his research in a series of pamphlets for the Crime Writers' Association in the 1970s. Lyall signed a contract in 1964 by the investments group Booker similar to one they had signed with Ian Fleming. In return for a lump payment of £25,000 and an annual salary, they and Lyall subsequently split his royalties, 51-49.
Up to the publication in 1975 of Judas Country, Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers (The Wrong Side Of The Sky, The Most Dangerous Game, Shooting Script, and Judas Country), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe (Midnight Plus One, Venus With Pistol, and Blame The Dead).
All these books were written in the first person, with a sardonic style reminiscent of the "hard-boiled private-eye" genre. Despite the commercial success of his work, Lyall began to feel that he was falling into a predictable pattern, and abandoned both his earlier genres, and the first-person narrative, for his “Harry Maxim" series of espionage thrillers beginning with The Secret Servant published in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposed BBC TV Series, featured Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer assigned as a security adviser to 10 Downing Street, and was followed by three sequels with the same central cast of characters.
In the 1990s Lyall changed literary direction once again, and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the fledgling British secret service in the years leading up to World War I.
Gavin Lyall died of cancer in 2003.
Lyall won the British Crime Writers' Association's Silver Dagger award in both 1964 and 1965. In 1966-67 he was Chairman of the British Crime Writers Association. He was not a prolific author, attributing his slow pace to obsession with technical accuracy. According to a British newspaper, “he spent many nights in his kitchen at Primrose Hill, north London, experimenting to see if one could, in fact, cast bullets from lead melted in a saucepan, or whether the muzzle flash of a revolver fired across a saucer of petrol really would ignite a fire”.
He eventually published the results of his research in a series of pamphlets for the Crime Writers' Association in the 1970s. Lyall signed a contract in 1964 by the investments group Booker similar to one they had signed with Ian Fleming. In return for a lump payment of £25,000 and an annual salary, they and Lyall subsequently split his royalties, 51-49.
Up to the publication in 1975 of Judas Country, Lyall's work falls into two groups. The aviation thrillers (The Wrong Side Of The Sky, The Most Dangerous Game, Shooting Script, and Judas Country), and what might be called "Euro-thrillers" revolving around international crime in Europe (Midnight Plus One, Venus With Pistol, and Blame The Dead).
All these books were written in the first person, with a sardonic style reminiscent of the "hard-boiled private-eye" genre. Despite the commercial success of his work, Lyall began to feel that he was falling into a predictable pattern, and abandoned both his earlier genres, and the first-person narrative, for his “Harry Maxim" series of espionage thrillers beginning with The Secret Servant published in 1980. This book, originally developed for a proposed BBC TV Series, featured Major Harry Maxim, an SAS officer assigned as a security adviser to 10 Downing Street, and was followed by three sequels with the same central cast of characters.
In the 1990s Lyall changed literary direction once again, and wrote four semi-historical thrillers about the fledgling British secret service in the years leading up to World War I.
Gavin Lyall died of cancer in 2003.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
January 15, 2018
Airplane pilot in need of a job gets hired on an American movie crew filming in the Caribbean just as the sparks of a local revolution are about to be fanned into flames...
Fun read, fast pace, a few coincidences...and a GREAT character voice.
Fun read, fast pace, a few coincidences...and a GREAT character voice.
April 30, 2020
My favourite Gavin Lyall maybe Midnight plus One but this comes a close second. Gritty story, the plot may be predictable but Gavin Lyall's first hand experience of stressed flying comes to the fore. A fabulous story, ideal for escapism and fun.
April 17, 2017
A pacy thriller with plenty of twists and lots of aviation detail. Would probably have got five stars just for involving de Havilland Vampires, even if it hadn't also been well-written and funny.
July 3, 2018
My copy of this book is over 40 years old. I loved it when I bought it, and I still like it so many years later. This one stays in my permanent collection.
April 30, 2018
Shooting Script is my favourite book of Gavin Lyall’s. Like Lyall himself, his protagonist is a former RAF fighter pilot; but rather than writing novels, the latter is scraping a living by running a shoe-string charter service around the Caribbean. Life seems to be taking a turn for the better when a film company hires him at a considerably improved pay level to fly a camera plane; but he soon finds out there is more to this contract than meets the eye.
As regards writing convincingly about flying, the difference between Lyall and some chairborne clown with a team of researchers is night and day. Furthermore, most of the other details ring true as well (although allowance must made for a fictional South American country, for obvious reasons).
The tone of the story, told in the first person, is somewhat cynical, but with a dry humour that is extremely entertaining, as are the twists and turns of the plot.
First rate on all counts.
As regards writing convincingly about flying, the difference between Lyall and some chairborne clown with a team of researchers is night and day. Furthermore, most of the other details ring true as well (although allowance must made for a fictional South American country, for obvious reasons).
The tone of the story, told in the first person, is somewhat cynical, but with a dry humour that is extremely entertaining, as are the twists and turns of the plot.
First rate on all counts.
October 16, 2019
Shooting script is written in the first person and is the tale of a solo flyer, making a hand to mouth living flying an old Dove aircraft in the Caribbean.
The book was written in the 1960's and this shows in the aircraft featured. I would be amazed if there are any De Haviland Vampires flying anywhere in the world, ditto Mitchell bombers and DH Doves.
That said, it is a very easy book to read, a story well told by someone who knows the aircraft he is talking about.
The book was written in the 1960's and this shows in the aircraft featured. I would be amazed if there are any De Haviland Vampires flying anywhere in the world, ditto Mitchell bombers and DH Doves.
That said, it is a very easy book to read, a story well told by someone who knows the aircraft he is talking about.
June 17, 2021
This is a 1966 aviation action thriller by English author Gavin Lyall. The book was included in the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Times list by the British Crime Writers’ Association. The setting is in the Caribbean in the 1960s, mostly on a fictional banana republic called Republica Libra. The writing is very good, exciting, fast-paced and funny at times. The story is told from the first-person perspective of our protagonist Keith Carr, a 36-year old extremely competent ex-RAF fighter pilot in the Korean War, now flying his own charter plane (a de Havilland Dove) in the Caribbean. The book reminds me of Alistair MacLean’s action thrillers. Lyall, however, is more detailed oriented and included a lot of strong technical details of air warfare and air attack strategies into the book and make them sound interesting. There is even a discussion on how filmmakers at the time took advantage of a loophole under the English Eady film subsidy. Unlike many action thrillers that are superficial, Lyall is very thoughtful and philosophical and provides a lot of reflections of life and politics into the book to give it depth. For example, when talking about how to get around sentries to a secured airbase, Carr correctly pointed out “there isn’t a military organization in the world where a loud enough shout from a high enough rank can’t bypass the most elaborate security arrangements.”
Spoiler Alert. The story starts with Lyall describing Carr’s life as a private charter plane pilot based in Kingston, Jamaica. When the world-famous Hollywood producer Walt Whitmore and his entourage (including his very pretty and competent female lawyer J.B. Penrose) came to town to shoot a movie and hired Carr to fly a camera plane for him, Carr accepted. Since the single engine Dove is not stable enough to be a film platform, Whitmore decided to buy an 20-year old B-25 Mitchell bomber (now decommissioned from military service) and convert it into a film plane. As Carr was working on the project, certain strange things happened. First, the FBI came to warn him that he should not interfere with foreign politics, hinting that Carr may face difficulties if he helps the rebel leader Jiminez, who is trying to overflow the two dictators in neighboring Republica Libra. The country at that time was run by a General Castillo of the Army and a General Bosco of the Air Force. Later, one of the students Carr was giving flying lessons to, Diego Ingles, was found murdered. Carr was at first baffled by all these. He later figured out that he has been accidentally caught in a political web. Diego is actually the son of rebel leader Jimenez. Whitmore is actually a secret supporter of Jiminez because he has $250,000 of his fortune freezed in Republica Libra by the dictators. Jiminez has agreed to give it back to Whitmore if he came into power. Whitmore’s buying the B-25 bomber for a film project is a front for him to get hold of a bomber so after the movie is done, he can give it to Diego to convert into a real bomber to destroy the 12 de Havilland Vampire fighter jets owned by the dictator Air Force General Bosco, who have been using them extremely effectively to attack rebel strongholds. The head of the Republica Libra air force is an Australian mercenary called Ned Rafter, a good friend of Carr because the two fought in the Korean War together. Ned tried to recruit Carr as his second-in-command but failed. After a lot of interesting twists and turns, Carr finally decided to help Whitmore and the rebels (to a large extent influenced by the fact he has now fallen in love with J.B. who is also working for the rebel’s cause. After the bombs they need for the raid failed to show up, Carr came up with an ingenious scheme. He knows Ned always park all his fighter jets in row one next to the other to make refueling easy. He also knows the fighters have thin skins. Carr therefore devised a scheme to drop 2000 pounds of bricks on the fighters by loading them into nets secured into the B-25’s bomb bay. The plan worked. In the end, Ned destroyed all the jets and gave the rebels the opportunity they need to enter the capital city Santo Bartolomeo without interference from the powerful firepower of the jets. The plot is summarized well by one of the characters well: “One old worn-out American bomber, flown by one old English pilot and a worn-out actor is going to drop a load of bricks on some aged jet fighters. Yes, that sounds very much like a Republica revolution to me.”
Spoiler Alert. The story starts with Lyall describing Carr’s life as a private charter plane pilot based in Kingston, Jamaica. When the world-famous Hollywood producer Walt Whitmore and his entourage (including his very pretty and competent female lawyer J.B. Penrose) came to town to shoot a movie and hired Carr to fly a camera plane for him, Carr accepted. Since the single engine Dove is not stable enough to be a film platform, Whitmore decided to buy an 20-year old B-25 Mitchell bomber (now decommissioned from military service) and convert it into a film plane. As Carr was working on the project, certain strange things happened. First, the FBI came to warn him that he should not interfere with foreign politics, hinting that Carr may face difficulties if he helps the rebel leader Jiminez, who is trying to overflow the two dictators in neighboring Republica Libra. The country at that time was run by a General Castillo of the Army and a General Bosco of the Air Force. Later, one of the students Carr was giving flying lessons to, Diego Ingles, was found murdered. Carr was at first baffled by all these. He later figured out that he has been accidentally caught in a political web. Diego is actually the son of rebel leader Jimenez. Whitmore is actually a secret supporter of Jiminez because he has $250,000 of his fortune freezed in Republica Libra by the dictators. Jiminez has agreed to give it back to Whitmore if he came into power. Whitmore’s buying the B-25 bomber for a film project is a front for him to get hold of a bomber so after the movie is done, he can give it to Diego to convert into a real bomber to destroy the 12 de Havilland Vampire fighter jets owned by the dictator Air Force General Bosco, who have been using them extremely effectively to attack rebel strongholds. The head of the Republica Libra air force is an Australian mercenary called Ned Rafter, a good friend of Carr because the two fought in the Korean War together. Ned tried to recruit Carr as his second-in-command but failed. After a lot of interesting twists and turns, Carr finally decided to help Whitmore and the rebels (to a large extent influenced by the fact he has now fallen in love with J.B. who is also working for the rebel’s cause. After the bombs they need for the raid failed to show up, Carr came up with an ingenious scheme. He knows Ned always park all his fighter jets in row one next to the other to make refueling easy. He also knows the fighters have thin skins. Carr therefore devised a scheme to drop 2000 pounds of bricks on the fighters by loading them into nets secured into the B-25’s bomb bay. The plan worked. In the end, Ned destroyed all the jets and gave the rebels the opportunity they need to enter the capital city Santo Bartolomeo without interference from the powerful firepower of the jets. The plot is summarized well by one of the characters well: “One old worn-out American bomber, flown by one old English pilot and a worn-out actor is going to drop a load of bricks on some aged jet fighters. Yes, that sounds very much like a Republica revolution to me.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 30, 2021
Keith Carr is an ex-Royal Air Force pilot slumming it around the sunny climes of Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the fictitious Republica Libra. He takes a Hollywood film crew on a private jaunt to Santo Bartolomeo, the Republic’s capital, and so embarks on a hair-raising escapade involving gorgeous women, murder, revolution and a dawn bombing raid on an island airport.
Gavin Lyall was well into his stride by the time he published his fourth novel, but despite the preordained tricks of his trade – the women who plays hard to get, the ex-military pilot, the shady past of all the protagonists, the constant hard drinking, the fist fights – something is missing from this adventure.
The locations are fine and Lyall gives a nice exotic spin on areas of the Caribbean which were still inaccessible to the majority of his readers. He spends a couple of pages describing the writers’ haunts along Ocho Rios and Oracabessa, where Noel Coward and our old friend Ian Fleming had their houses. He even mentions Golden Eye by name, which is rather cute. Lyall’s spin doesn’t have affection for these places; he treats them with a cynical wonder, a travelogue of names and places and incidents. There’s little love for the sweaty bars, film sets and private airfields his hero vacations in. Even less for the imagined dictate of Republica Libra where the current incumbent General Castillo is under threat from his vice-president, General Bosca, as well as the deposed autocrat General Jimenez.
Generally [get it?] Carr saunters around with much swagger and takes delight in rubbing all up the wrong way. He has a habit of smoking an unlit pipe which I found both odd and distracting. There is a long cast of characters, some of whom are interesting. J.B., the female solicitor to the stars, and Luiz Monterrey, a character actor with a hidden past, are probably the most interesting. The most ridiculous is Walt Whitmore, macho western star who wants to get involved in a real live revolt. There’s a sudden burst of sexual tension when Juanita Jimenez arrives, but it’s the only burst of tension in a tepid plot which resolves itself carelessly and long-windedly.
Flying sequences aside – there’s a spectacular dogfight with a MIG jet plane and the bombing raid holds the attention – the story felt a bit flat, as if Lyall was treading water. The characters don’t grab and the incidents are slow to build. I particularly disliked a loaded-dice life-or-death gamble which lacked all suspense as the reader already knows the outcome and is even worse for being such a stupid game for Ned Rafter, one of several nominal villains, to allow himself to become involved with. Here, I feel Lyall’s people should be more verbally persuasive. They do fine earlier on, coaxing each other to assist in Jimenez’s counter-revolution, so why not now?
A good read, but not as sparkling as Lyall’s first efforts.
Gavin Lyall was well into his stride by the time he published his fourth novel, but despite the preordained tricks of his trade – the women who plays hard to get, the ex-military pilot, the shady past of all the protagonists, the constant hard drinking, the fist fights – something is missing from this adventure.
The locations are fine and Lyall gives a nice exotic spin on areas of the Caribbean which were still inaccessible to the majority of his readers. He spends a couple of pages describing the writers’ haunts along Ocho Rios and Oracabessa, where Noel Coward and our old friend Ian Fleming had their houses. He even mentions Golden Eye by name, which is rather cute. Lyall’s spin doesn’t have affection for these places; he treats them with a cynical wonder, a travelogue of names and places and incidents. There’s little love for the sweaty bars, film sets and private airfields his hero vacations in. Even less for the imagined dictate of Republica Libra where the current incumbent General Castillo is under threat from his vice-president, General Bosca, as well as the deposed autocrat General Jimenez.
Generally [get it?] Carr saunters around with much swagger and takes delight in rubbing all up the wrong way. He has a habit of smoking an unlit pipe which I found both odd and distracting. There is a long cast of characters, some of whom are interesting. J.B., the female solicitor to the stars, and Luiz Monterrey, a character actor with a hidden past, are probably the most interesting. The most ridiculous is Walt Whitmore, macho western star who wants to get involved in a real live revolt. There’s a sudden burst of sexual tension when Juanita Jimenez arrives, but it’s the only burst of tension in a tepid plot which resolves itself carelessly and long-windedly.
Flying sequences aside – there’s a spectacular dogfight with a MIG jet plane and the bombing raid holds the attention – the story felt a bit flat, as if Lyall was treading water. The characters don’t grab and the incidents are slow to build. I particularly disliked a loaded-dice life-or-death gamble which lacked all suspense as the reader already knows the outcome and is even worse for being such a stupid game for Ned Rafter, one of several nominal villains, to allow himself to become involved with. Here, I feel Lyall’s people should be more verbally persuasive. They do fine earlier on, coaxing each other to assist in Jimenez’s counter-revolution, so why not now?
A good read, but not as sparkling as Lyall’s first efforts.
Want to read
May 3, 2023Dnf 50%
January 29, 2024
Fun read, well done.
Builds up nicely to a satisfying ending. Layall reminds me a bit of Eric Ambler. The modern reader might find it a tame.
Builds up nicely to a satisfying ending. Layall reminds me a bit of Eric Ambler. The modern reader might find it a tame.
March 27, 2024
Twist and turns, intrigue, skulduggery and an unusual lead character. This is a great page-turner and it's easy to see why it was an award-winner when first released.
July 18, 2016
"Thriller - Flying charter around the Caribbean wasn't quite the same as flying in Korea, but it was still a living and Carr had built up a solid reputation over the years and managed to keep his hands clean- something he believed you needed to do in that part of the world. But when he is almost brought down by mercenary pilots flying for the newly instated La Republica government, and they make approaches, as do the FBI, he realises that it is inevitable that things will get a bit messy.
But with work drying up, and the fact that an old war buddy is flying for La Republica, he finds what he sees as an escape from the conflict, flying a camera-plane for a major Hollywood movie."
But with work drying up, and the fact that an old war buddy is flying for La Republica, he finds what he sees as an escape from the conflict, flying a camera-plane for a major Hollywood movie."
December 31, 2022
Shooting Script
Another excellent novel, full of action and adventure. Obviously Mr Lyall is an expert pilot, the book couldn’t have been written the way it has been without a pilots knowLedge. A really excellent and exciting read and I thoroughly recommend it.
Another excellent novel, full of action and adventure. Obviously Mr Lyall is an expert pilot, the book couldn’t have been written the way it has been without a pilots knowLedge. A really excellent and exciting read and I thoroughly recommend it.
November 7, 2016
Enjoyable read, although stuck in the 1960s and a bit James Bond like. Ex-fighter pilot now running charter flights gets caught up in a revolution.
Read
April 16, 2017Excellent read.Takes you back to late 50s early 60's and that is Lyalls charm.Really good read,if you love old prop driven planes. Lack of foul language and graphic sex is a major bonus. Great author who really did his research and that comes across really well.
Want to read
March 6, 2019Synopsis: Carr is flying a film company's plane around the Caribbean. His job soon proves to be less peaceful than he expected.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews