- Hardcover: 374 pages
- Publisher: Crown (Jun 7 1994)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0517585669
- ISBN-13: 978-0517585665
- Product Dimensions: 22.6 x 15.5 x 3.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 680 g
- Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #801,742 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
Phoenix Rising reads like a cross between a black box transcript and Business Week. The dual dangers to a new airline involve financial skulduggery and terrorism. New chief financial officer Elizabeth Sterling must cope with both as she discovers just how much trouble her new company is in. As events jump from bombs in Washington state to London banks to the arctic wilds of Canada, Elizabeth must race to meet them. Not only is her airline in danger of hostile takeover, but her daughter's very life is at stake. The gripping story of her ripostes to these threats makes an absorbing book. Dennis Winters
From Kirkus Reviews
Combining elements of the financial and the aviation thriller, Nance (Scorpion Strike, 1992) puts together a would-be page-turner marred by cardboard-thin, uninvolving characters and a not entirely credible conspiracy. Elizabeth Sterling, a brilliant and beautiful investment banker, takes on the task of salvaging an economically troubled start-up airline, only to find herself confronting a mystifying campaign of sabotage. The company's finances are in complete disarray, its computer systems are compromised, and two attempts at downing flights would have been mass tragedies if not for the heroic efforts of the crafts' pilots. Jetting from Seattle to New York to London and Hong Kong, Sterling struggles to simultaneously restructure the airline's finances and restore Wall Street's confidence in the firm. Stymied at every turn, she untangles a dangerous web of escalating intrigue that threatens to drive the airline out of business before it can succeed. Enlisting the aid of her lover, Brian Murphy (the airline's chief pilot), and retired Scottish businessman Creighton MacRae, she discovers a plot by an international financial group to control the US commercial aviation market. MacRae uses his resources to help Sterling find alternative financing while he worms his way to the root of the problem. Murphy struggles to find the saboteur responsible for the two near-crashes and to uncover the mole inside the company he believes is providing access and information to the airline's enemies. Together, they pull off a 12th-hour rescue and save the firm. Phoenix Rising takes much too long to lift off--the conspiracy is too slowly unveiled, the villains make their appearance very late in the story--but once it gets airborne, it develops some momentum. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
so-so,
By A Customer
This review is from: Phoenix Rising (Mass Market Paperback)
I listened to the audiobook and my question is: "what factory makes the robot who read this book?
2.0 out of 5 stars
Doesn't rise very high,
This review is from: Phoenix Rising (Mass Market Paperback)
A beautiful financial whiz gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to help bring Pan Am back from airline oblivion. (the real Pan Am had just gone under when this book appeared, and hardcore aviation enthusiasts were finding it hard to let go). The new Pan Am has a novel idea - fewer passengers per flight, leaving more room for lounges. Unfortunately, the idea is a dangerous one (more on that), and somebody has now set their sights on grounding PA for good. A series of elaborate accidents - so effective that heroic and quick-thinking piloting just barely save the day - plague PA planes in the air. On the ground, the mysterious conspiracy works to undercut PA's financing, requiring equally heroic and quick-thinking accounting methods. Will PA survive?Will anybody care? "Phoenix Rising" is the typical example of a book that tries to come off as gripping and edge of your seat even as its prose and marketing are aimed comfortably within a well-established market (the market for readers who cares about an airline being named Pan Am; readers who know that there is a "big three" of US airlines; readers who care about the inner workings of aircraft financing). The premise itself has a big hole in it - why would somebody care enough about Pan Am to ground it? The heroine's explanation is utterly illogical: because it would prove you could fly planes with fewer passengers and with greater amenities and still turn a profit. Forgetting that that's pure wish fulfillment, were it true, the other airlines could just copy Pan Am's idea and profit just as easily as Pan Am. (Because the other airlines' position couldn't be as precarious as Pan Am's, they'd be even better positioned to profit from the idea than Pan Am, so the idea is simply illogical). The mysterious conspirators could also simply buy Pan Am outright. What really kills the book is...who cares? This isn't a book about a horrible air crash ("Final Approach") or some doomsday weapon ("Medusa's Child"). This is a book about airplanes flying with sleeper seats and treadmills - hardly earthshaking, and not worth anybody's time.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Shanku Niyogi,
By A Customer
This review is from: Phoenix Rising (Mass Market Paperback)
Airplanes get de-icing treatment when there is a risk of icing. Not simply because it's cold.At cruising altitude the temperature is colder than 50 degrees below zero. Is every flight de-iced? No. As a commercial pilot, maybe the author knows more than you think.
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