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5.0 out of 5 stars
Mach 5 Thriller delivers, Nov 14 2000
"Firefox" is the code name for a new breed of Russian fighter, a plane that's invisible to radar, outruns missiles, and wields an arsenal guided by the pilot's thoughts. With nothing remotely capable of matching the super-jet on their drawing boards, British and American spymatsers hit on a seemingly impossible, virtually suicidal plan: send one of their pilots into Russia - into the Russians' high-security flight-test center - to find the super plane, and steal it. Complicating things is Mitchell Gant, the west's designated skyjacker, a burnt out Viet Nam vet who test flew captured Russian planes for the CIA. Scarred within after being shotdown, Gant's plods on, begging to be discovered and put out of his misery.Like the plan, "Fireox" the novel seems like a no-brainer - Craig Thomas seems unsure of his hold on military technology, and by his prose, you'd never confuse him with other authors who've done the stuff they've written about (like fly planes and get shot at). Instead, Thomas' crisp prose, an almost constant state of tension and an almost supersonic pacing put "Firefox" ahead of just about any other aviation technothriller. Bets of all are the flying scenes. While other writers boast of being able to put the reader inside the cockpit of a high-performance fighter - only Thomas delivers. Unlike other authors, Thomas knows the tension, stark terror and gallons of adrenaline that a fighter pilot can be expected to go through while trapped in a dogfight. Then there's Thomas' hero - Gant. Thomas' conceit is that Gant's superiors were so ready to see there case fail, that they chose the one man least capable of pulling it off. Gant is unlike any technothriller writer you've ever read about - he begins the novel trapped in a chronic nervous breakdown. Yet he excels over the cardboard charachters of other books who just push buttons and read computer screens. Those charachters just register information - Gant actually experiences it as real people would. With the exception of "Flight ofthe Intruder", and Thomas' other Mitchell Gant novels, this is probably the best air-war thriller you'll read. Sequels included "Firefox Down", "Winterhawk" and "A Different War" - "Winterhawk" being my favorite story, but never outrunning the flying scenes of "Firefox".
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