The Airbus A380, a behemoth of the skies, is the latest and greatest in terms of technology, supposedly virtually free of human error. How then to explain Ransome Airways Flight 189's fatal plunge into the Severn Estuary shortly after take-off from Bristol International Airport? That's not really what coroner Jenny Cooper is asking though. Her remit is supposedly the death of a sailor who happened to be on the water when the plane hit, taking him out as well. But then Jenny discovers that her investigation of the sailor's death (and the grieving parents of a child who had been travelling unaccompanied on the plane and was found near the sailor) is raising some questions that the authorities don't seem to want to answer…

I really enjoyed this book. Despite it being the fourth volume in an ongoing series, of which I had not read any of the previous volumes, I was able to follow along with the characters' backstory all right and felt quite at home in the fictional Bristol and environs. I do admit to getting a bit muddled with the geography, especially when Jenny travelled to Wales for some things, but nothing that a good map of the area couldn't fix.

I also LOVED the airplane bits. Some may find the technical details about the crash excessive or nerdy, but they were actually the main reason I wanted to read this book, so I waded through them quite happily. The ending seemed a bit helter-skelter and bonkers, but that could just have been my eyeballs tripping over themselves trying to read as fast as possible. It's definitely a fast read, even with the technical details.

I'd recommend this for aviation enthusiasts and those who like their mysteries with female protagonists. Fans of the Canadian show Da Vinci's Inquest, which is also about a coroner coming to grips with society and his place in the world, may also want to see what Jenny Cooper is all about. ( )

Before I read this book I didn’t know the specific role of a coroner, other than make a call on how someone died. This book detailed exactly their role and threw in a thrilling and intriguing story to boot.

While I take plaudits and tabloid reviews on books with a bag of salt it seems everyone who did rave about the series of novels centered on Coroner Jenny Cooper got it bang on. There is very little to pick apart in the style and picture painting that is a credit to Hall. To reiterate that point, Hall is in fact a male writer writing about the inner thoughts and feelings of a female, and while I guess plenty novelists probably do write on the POV of the opposite sex, until I researched the author after I read the book I actually thought Hall was a Hall-ess.

So to the story itself; an Airbus A380, the largest and safest plane in the air crashes into the Severn Estuary with complete loss of life and while the investigation falls under the jurisdiction of England’s Ministry, the discovery of two bodies on the river bank fall into Cooper’s. One, a very young girl who was a passenger is the only one of the entire complement to have a life jacket on, the second the sailor of a yacht which happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. By deduction, guesswork and luck Cooper finds out that the deaths of these two is not quite as straight forward as it seems, and when spooks from both sides of the Atlantic start showing up in an attempt to make Cooper do as they say, the plot thickens into the darker side of politics, terrorism and Government cover ups.

I don’t want to give anymore away than this as it would spoil the book somewhat as the conclusion was one I didn’t (quite) see coming, and even though this books comes in sometime after novels there is no spoiling of continuation. Unfortunately there was the obligatory love interest however not to the extent where it smacked on Hollywood in that is was somewhat subtle.

Top read, with a frighteningly plausible reality! ( )

"The Flight" is the 4th in the Jenny Cooper, coroner, series. An Airbus A380 crashes soon after take-off, killing 600 people. One passenger and an on-ground victim are in Cooper's jurisdiction, hence her involvement. LIKED - lots of interesting detail about the technology employed in current passenger jets, and the linked issue of pilot v. computer control. There is a very interesting set-up regarding Cooper's willingness "to play ball" with the larger investigation headed by Sir James Kendall, and these passages are well described including political pressures, consequences of stepping on the wrong toes, what the public needs to know vs. has the right to know, etc. but then that storyline seems to disappear until the very last pages. DISLIKES The last third of the book becomes a conspiracy lover's dream, with several plot sidetracks involving mysterious helicopters, explosive residue, coincidental deaths, threats, theories - the whole shebang. And our favorite spy agency is right in the middle of it. At this point the story went in a direction that did not hold my interest and I became anxious to just finish it. Didn't care much for Jenny, so I have no interest in reading other books to learn more about her. Took a look at plot summaries of the other three books and they didn't turn me on, doubt that I'll read more of this series. ( )

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