Final Approach

An airliner attempting a bad-weather landing in a Midwest city plows into another awaiting takeoff. With more than 100 people dead, the National Transportation Safety Board assigns Joe Wallingford to investigate. Was the disaster caused by human error or by technical malfunction? Did outside electronic interference, perhaps from a top-secret SDI radar, disrupt flight controls? Nance, a leading airline safety analyst and author of nonfiction works on aviation, debuts as a novelist with a first-rate technical detective story. While keeping readers in suspense, he explores the dynamics of factions within the safety bureaucracy and limns the problems raised for airline management by deregulation. With realistic dialogue and convincing characters, particularly Wallingford and Senator Kell Martinson, this nonmilitary techno-thriller is a sure winner. (Sept.)