Wild Blue - Softcover

This bulky novel about the U.S. Air Force from its creation in 1947 to 1978 was composed, we are told, on the writers' personal computersa fact possibly responsible, in part, for its undistinguished style and lack of sustained tension. Boyne (one-time USAF career officer and author of several books on flying) and Thompson (Air Force "brat" and author of three thrillers) seem admirably qualified to capture and novelize what Thompson calls the "closed culture" of the USAF. Yet their all-too-comprehensive storywhich follows the fortunes of a handful of airmen (and their families), among them an egotistic careerist carrying on family tradition, a thrill-seeker and a blackwhips the reader back and forth between America and Europe, Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East, covering the labors of ground crews, aerial combat, hazardous test flights, Pentagon infighting and racial friction and has about it a cranked-out quality that makes relatively dull reading. Excitements there are (if too brief and too few); the characters seem real (if none are memorable); and there is authentic detail aplenty. What the authors have signally failed to come up with is the imagination that might have turned sociomilitary history into genuine drama. 75,000 ad/promo; author tour.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The average reader may be put off by this novel about the Air Force. At half the length it would probably appeal to male readers, and to pilots especially, but the size and the three-page glossary of acronyms may reduce its popularity. The authors know their subject (Boyne, a retired Air Force colonel, is director of the National Air and Space Museum), and the book has a military atmosphere. Six men are the focus, with the history of the Air Force revealed through their careers from 1947 to the present. Each of the men is mildly stereotyped, and the minor characters are almost too numerous to track. Whenever the momentum begins to flag, someone crashes, and death is treated in a cavalier manner. What Janet Dailey and Jeane Westin did for the women's services, Boyne and Thompson have done for the Air Force, but not as well. Andrea Lee Shuey, Dallas
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.