CONQUERORS OF THE SKY
Thomas Fleming Forge $27.95 (544p)
ISBN O-765-30322.1

    A century of aviation and world history
are revisited in novelist and historian
Thomas Fleming's latest offering, which
tracks the development of the airplane from a
fantastic toy into a potent economic and
military force. In the early 1930s, Frank
Buchanan is a brilliant and conscientious
aircraft designer, and Adrian Van Ness is his
unscrupulous business partner in the
increasingly powerful airplane business of
California. Associates, wives, mistresses
sex clubs and gallons of booze accompany them
through peace and war as their initial
idealism fades into cynicism. Real life
personalities make appearances. Charles
Lindbergh survives airmail night duty and
famously flies solo to Paris. JFK is
regularly treated to the services of a high-
class whore and a giggling Richard Nixon is
shown a porn film before getting a promo
pitch for a new aircraft. The book is at its
best in its aerial set-pieces. Ancient
Hollywood cameras grind out brilliant
recreations of the old barnstorming days;
Spads and Fokkers reenact WWI, looping and
crashing earthward in plumes of smoke. Later,
in terrifically exciting scenes of WWII air
warfare, B-17 Flying Fortresses lumber to
unpublicized destruction on forays over
Europe while daring low-level fighter-bomber
attacks on Japanese fleets turn the tide of
the war. Interwoven with such potent scenes
are clandestine romances, in which women are
rarely more than sexual fodder for macho
males. Pulpy dialogue and supersonic
metaphors abound but Fleming knows how to
turn history into captivating fiction. (Jan.
23)
Forecast: Aviation enthusiasts are the core
audience for this novel -- which is being
published to coincide with the 100th
anniversary of powered flight --but it is
also a natural airport buy for travellers._