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Paper Wings
"A masterful melange of deadly mysteries and desperate acts." -- John J. Nance, New York Times bestselling author of LOCKOUT
When a boat and its grisly cargo are found adrift off Fort Lauderdale ...
... the investigation leads to more than “just” murder. In fact, the evidence points to a connection of an in-flight emergency that resulted in passenger fatalities and forced a diversion of Patriot Airlines Flight 63 to Bermunda.
As the accidents investigation chairman of the pilots’ union, Captain Hart Lindy will find himself reluctantly drawn into the National Transportation Safety Board’s inquiry only to discover that someone is going to great lengths that include murder and kidnapping to prevent the facts from being exposed. But who? And why?
These are the questions Lindy will need to answer in order to get at the truth about what really happened to Flight 63. His task is complicated by his own personal demons, including the horrors of past airline crash investigations, as well as having to walk a diplomatic tightrope with an eccentric FBI special agent who is barely tolerating NTSB protocol, and an ambitious female NTSB investigator with eyes for Hart.
Written by a veteran airline pilot and aviation analyst, Paper Wings will keep you up in the air and on the edge of your seat in first class. You’ll want to keep your belts fastened while in flight!
When a boat and its grisly cargo are found adrift off Fort Lauderdale ...
... the investigation leads to more than “just” murder. In fact, the evidence points to a connection of an in-flight emergency that resulted in passenger fatalities and forced a diversion of Patriot Airlines Flight 63 to Bermunda.
As the accidents investigation chairman of the pilots’ union, Captain Hart Lindy will find himself reluctantly drawn into the National Transportation Safety Board’s inquiry only to discover that someone is going to great lengths that include murder and kidnapping to prevent the facts from being exposed. But who? And why?
These are the questions Lindy will need to answer in order to get at the truth about what really happened to Flight 63. His task is complicated by his own personal demons, including the horrors of past airline crash investigations, as well as having to walk a diplomatic tightrope with an eccentric FBI special agent who is barely tolerating NTSB protocol, and an ambitious female NTSB investigator with eyes for Hart.
Written by a veteran airline pilot and aviation analyst, Paper Wings will keep you up in the air and on the edge of your seat in first class. You’ll want to keep your belts fastened while in flight!
358 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 7, 2017
42 people are currently reading
22 people want to read
About the author
Les Abend
4 books7 followersB-777 Captain for major airline
Contributing Editor/Flying Magazine
Contributor to CNN.com
CNN on-air Aviation Analyst
Contributing Editor/Flying Magazine
Contributor to CNN.com
CNN on-air Aviation Analyst
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 16, 2017
Kudos to Les Abend for a great first book! Early in the book a body is found in a boat, a passenger plane has an emergency landing in Bermuda with two fatalities, the airline pilot's two daughters are kidnapped, and this is just the beginning. This was fast-paced and kept my interest throughout as the plot unfolded turning over new mysteries one after the other. It took local law enforcement, the NTSB, and the FBI to connect the dots and get to the root of the various occurrences and find the truth. Not sure of the legality, but the ending was satisfying to me.
Many thanks to WildBlue Press through NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Many thanks to WildBlue Press through NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
May 14, 2018
A body is found in the cabin of a boat that has been left to drift out to sea. This happens days after a plane crash that resulted in two deaths and a blown engine, but how are the two connected?
Something that started off being quite intriguing turned out to be pretty mediocre in my opinion. Finding out the connection between the two occurrences is what kept me reading until the end, but I especially found the passages describing the crash landing procedure of the plane to be particularly tedious and not interesting to read at all. Just not my cup of tea I'm afraid.
Something that started off being quite intriguing turned out to be pretty mediocre in my opinion. Finding out the connection between the two occurrences is what kept me reading until the end, but I especially found the passages describing the crash landing procedure of the plane to be particularly tedious and not interesting to read at all. Just not my cup of tea I'm afraid.
February 22, 2018
This read was "a wild one"! It reads like a proposed screen play for the next Joel & Ethan Coen movie featuring a very large cast. If you readers have yet to start this one, allow me to make one suggestion. Keep a pad and pencil beside you and assume the role of the casting agent for the movie. List the many characters and match them and their particular "charms" to the actress/actor best fitting the role.
IMHO, the most colorful characters are Miami FBI Special Agent Ryan Fredericks, Miami PD Decretive Alvarez, and the detective's side kick "patrolman" Tom. The two Townsend daughters also have great roles. I know the perfect Atlanta-area young actress sisters to play them. They played in the movie "We Bought A Zoo". They both have TV series chops.
The author's choice of main character is a four-stripe captain for a large, fictitious airline big enough to have its own pilots' union (spoiler alert). Author Abend flies for American Airlines. Captain Hart is a flawed character with many demons to fight. He doesn't overcome any of them, setting us up for sequels.
This is Abend's first novel. There are a few "autobiographical" hints sprinkled through his novel. Look for pilot reluctance to volunteer to work for the union, pilot reluctance to pay union dues, pilot anger at the union agreeing to pay cuts to avoid the airline going bankrupt, pilot and flight attendant union squabbles over drinking water supplies at layover cities with bad water, etc. There is also a lot of dry humor between the characters that the Coen brothers won't even have to edit out. The Coen brothers also have some sex scenes to film.
As a retired air safety investigator (32 of them), I've started a quest to read as many air safety investigation novels as I can in my remaining days above room temperature. After about a dozen, I've noted some similarities. NEVER open a hotel/motel room door when someone knocks on it. Many authors write investigator characters who do "Lone Ranger" investigations. It doesn't happen in the real world. Abend got it right with his description of the NTSB process of the party system, press attention, specialized groups (the ICAO Annex 13 describes the internationally-agreed report format with each section requiring a specialized group), group chairmen, Investigator-in-Charge (IIC), quickly-arranged work space with electrical outlets for the computers and a huge coffee pot, and twice-daily progress meetings with all team members (at least the ones present - many are on the road gathering more data).
The crew union members are part of the investigation process for many reasons. Abend does a good job of describing why. I'm anxiously awaiting Captain Abend's next novel.
IMHO, the most colorful characters are Miami FBI Special Agent Ryan Fredericks, Miami PD Decretive Alvarez, and the detective's side kick "patrolman" Tom. The two Townsend daughters also have great roles. I know the perfect Atlanta-area young actress sisters to play them. They played in the movie "We Bought A Zoo". They both have TV series chops.
The author's choice of main character is a four-stripe captain for a large, fictitious airline big enough to have its own pilots' union (spoiler alert). Author Abend flies for American Airlines. Captain Hart is a flawed character with many demons to fight. He doesn't overcome any of them, setting us up for sequels.
This is Abend's first novel. There are a few "autobiographical" hints sprinkled through his novel. Look for pilot reluctance to volunteer to work for the union, pilot reluctance to pay union dues, pilot anger at the union agreeing to pay cuts to avoid the airline going bankrupt, pilot and flight attendant union squabbles over drinking water supplies at layover cities with bad water, etc. There is also a lot of dry humor between the characters that the Coen brothers won't even have to edit out. The Coen brothers also have some sex scenes to film.
As a retired air safety investigator (32 of them), I've started a quest to read as many air safety investigation novels as I can in my remaining days above room temperature. After about a dozen, I've noted some similarities. NEVER open a hotel/motel room door when someone knocks on it. Many authors write investigator characters who do "Lone Ranger" investigations. It doesn't happen in the real world. Abend got it right with his description of the NTSB process of the party system, press attention, specialized groups (the ICAO Annex 13 describes the internationally-agreed report format with each section requiring a specialized group), group chairmen, Investigator-in-Charge (IIC), quickly-arranged work space with electrical outlets for the computers and a huge coffee pot, and twice-daily progress meetings with all team members (at least the ones present - many are on the road gathering more data).
The crew union members are part of the investigation process for many reasons. Abend does a good job of describing why. I'm anxiously awaiting Captain Abend's next novel.
March 4, 2022
I really wanted to like this story. I’m a fan of the author’s nonfiction pieces, and when I learned he’d written a book detailing a plane crash investigation, I was all over it—especially given some of the similarities to Michael Crichton’s Airframe.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few cringe-inducing moments in this book, especially those including racism, sexism, homophobic language, and plenty of what I’m afraid most would call “Boomerisms”: all of which do not serve the story in any manner. While at first I thought it was just the character personalities, as I got further into the book, it seemed more and more like political soapboxing on the author’s part—in a way that completely distracts from the thrilling plot.
So if you don’t want to encounter slurs, male-gaze depictions of women (even some of them underage), stereotyped depictions of war veterans, or political diatribes against today’s youth, you might want to steer clear of this one. Nevertheless, besides these points, the story is quite good, so it all depends on how much you’re willing to overlook.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few cringe-inducing moments in this book, especially those including racism, sexism, homophobic language, and plenty of what I’m afraid most would call “Boomerisms”: all of which do not serve the story in any manner. While at first I thought it was just the character personalities, as I got further into the book, it seemed more and more like political soapboxing on the author’s part—in a way that completely distracts from the thrilling plot.
So if you don’t want to encounter slurs, male-gaze depictions of women (even some of them underage), stereotyped depictions of war veterans, or political diatribes against today’s youth, you might want to steer clear of this one. Nevertheless, besides these points, the story is quite good, so it all depends on how much you’re willing to overlook.
March 20, 2023
I read this in a book hat had 3 stories on Aviation. This one pertained to a flight which had to make an emergency landing and the steps taken by the NTSB and experts from the airline accident team. The story relayed that this accident was caused to permit a transaction to happen. I detailed the steps that an organization was willing to take in order to stop the investigation.
Follow along as two different law enforcement groups, one local and one Federal, became partners in following the clues. The closing is not what was expected in this sort of situation. It is definitely worth your time to read.
Follow along as two different law enforcement groups, one local and one Federal, became partners in following the clues. The closing is not what was expected in this sort of situation. It is definitely worth your time to read.
March 16, 2017
Did not finish at page 57.
This book was awful, I didn't really enjoy the chapters as much as I hoped I would. The first chapter really drew me in, and I was so excited for the book, but I started to lose interest around the fifty-page mark. I didn't like how the author wrote the women who kidnapped Kim and Ashley as idiots. She made the characters seem fake with the "bikini allowance" and how the characters would say they looked "slutty", it screamed stupid. If someone is smart enough to kidnap two children from a school, shooting a guard in the process, then drive a car filled with bombs, I don't think they'd be the kind to be worried about bikini allowances.
Overall, this book seemed messy, and more and more characters were appearing and it was hard to keep track of who's who. I kept getting confused. Another problem with having so many characters is that you want to make sure they don't all have the same personality, and although that's fine, it leads to people having unrealistic traits about them. If I was kidnapped by someone who shot a man, blew up a car and had my sister with me, I would not be making snarky remarks, no matter how much this author wants to push the moody teenager vibe. It's not realistic. You would be scared, you would want your family and you would feel a rush of adrenaline to protect yourself and your sister. You would not be fighting the urge to flip your kidnappers off.
This book was awful, I didn't really enjoy the chapters as much as I hoped I would. The first chapter really drew me in, and I was so excited for the book, but I started to lose interest around the fifty-page mark. I didn't like how the author wrote the women who kidnapped Kim and Ashley as idiots. She made the characters seem fake with the "bikini allowance" and how the characters would say they looked "slutty", it screamed stupid. If someone is smart enough to kidnap two children from a school, shooting a guard in the process, then drive a car filled with bombs, I don't think they'd be the kind to be worried about bikini allowances.
Overall, this book seemed messy, and more and more characters were appearing and it was hard to keep track of who's who. I kept getting confused. Another problem with having so many characters is that you want to make sure they don't all have the same personality, and although that's fine, it leads to people having unrealistic traits about them. If I was kidnapped by someone who shot a man, blew up a car and had my sister with me, I would not be making snarky remarks, no matter how much this author wants to push the moody teenager vibe. It's not realistic. You would be scared, you would want your family and you would feel a rush of adrenaline to protect yourself and your sister. You would not be fighting the urge to flip your kidnappers off.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews