No Highway

By Nevil Shute

 Theodore Honey is a shy, inconspicuous engineer whose eccentric interests are frowned upon in aviation circles. When a passenger plane crashes in Newfoundland under unexplained circumstances, Honey is determined to prove his unorthodox theory about what went wrong to his superiors, before more lives are lost. But while flying to the crash scene to investigate, Honey discovers to his horror that he is on board one of the defective planes and that he and his fellow passengers, including a friendly young stewardess and an aging movie actress, are in imminent peril.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 12, 2010
• ISBN: 9780307474124

Reviews for No Highway

[jjmcgaffey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

That's good - in a very Shute style. The investigation of technical matters relating to airplane safety - in this case, metal fatigue (very little understood at the time) leading to the tail of a particular type of aircraft literally falling off in the air - is the basis of the story; not a subject I know anything about, but I understood the matter probably as well as the narrator did (he says, multiple times, that he's not able to truly understand it but he trusts the researcher who does). Then the scientific facts (well, theories, at that point) run into personalities and politics and finances and on and on, and things get complicated. It's an odd story from several angles - there's at least two protagonists on the airplane side, and two more on the romance side (oh yeah, there's a romance. Or two, or one and a half...). And it's possibly the best depiction I've seen of the way work doesn't wait until you're done with one thing to present you with another! Fun story, well-written (of course), worth reading and likely worth rereading in a couple years.

[bcrowl399 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The suspense was just right. There were a few areas which were kind of ponderous, but I never got lost. A great story.

[dbsovereign · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An amazingly prescient book that actually predicted that we would discover something called "metal fatigue" (something that does happen to aircraft hulls). The genius in the story is a bit of a stereotypical nerd type...

[ken5me5old5mate · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An interesting little story about an aircraft designer who is convinced that a particular plane will crash on a particular date and his journey to stop that from happening.

Another British novel that has undertones of class and expectations. A good read.

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oh Nevil Shute, how are you so fascinating?
His books are always about these sort of greyish people who eventually triumph in the end because of their deep-down decency and competence.
There's usually a whole lot of technical details about airplanes.
And just when you're really getting into it, you get slapped in the face by attitudes of half a century ago.
And despite all this, they are addictive as all hell.

In this one, there's a genius engineer named Mr. Honey (not kidding) who is also a crackpot. He discovers a fatal flaw in some airplanes, and no one believes him except his boss who is neither a genius or a crackpot, but he is a decent guy.

So Mr Honey has to go on a crazy air journey halfway across the world, because that's what you do if you're a colorless shy decent genius in a Nevil Shute novel, and then of course some beautiful intelligent women fall in love with him (one of them is a movie star) and decide that the best use they could possibly make of their lives is to keep house for him and his daughter (his wife died tragically in the war) because being a genius apparently means that you have never heard of washing your floors.

Also he is the kindest bravest man who has ever existed but he mainly manifests this by blinking pathetically at ladies who then feel compelled to bring him Ovaltine. Plus he more or less ignores his daughter except when he is using her to experiment with some kind of Ouija Board technology.

Anyway, despite it being completely fucking ridiculous, I couldn't put it down. I don't know.

[readinggeek451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A riveting novel, first published in 1948, about aircraft design and testing and the investigation of an air crash. This may sound like dry stuff, but Shute's writing sucks one in from the very first page. The characters are very real and human (although the attitudes toward women are of course very dated--referring to young women as 'girls' and taking it as a given that married women quit their jobs and stay home).Highly recommended to anyone who won't be put off by the period attitudes toward women.

[reading_fox · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

slightly dated now - but a very enjoyable and gripping read, set in post war britain this details a moment in the lives of some of the aeronautics engineers and the conflict between basic research and applied science. The impact on everyday life is well written, and the concepts as applicable now as they were then.

[melwil_2006 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I never thought I'd gobble up a 1948 book about flight engineering. But then, considering my history with Nevil Shute, I really shouldn't be surprised.Nevil Shute was the author of the first 'grown up' book I ever read - A Town Like Alice when I was nine. My love for that book is eternal, and has been added by a love of On The Beach, but I haven't really been able to get into some of Shute's other books.Until this one. It tells the story of Theodore Honey; a quiet, unsociable man, widowed during the second world war and trying to bring up a young daughter. He's quite brilliant - not only in the area of fatigue in planes (which is the focus of the book) - but also in 'stranger' areas, such as 'spirit reading'. When he is sent off from England to Canada to examine a wreckage of a Reindeer plane, he discovers that he is flying in a rather unsafe version of the same plane. So he decides to ground it. Dramatically.Nevil Shute's books, although technical, are all about the characters. Honey is joined by a strong group - from his young daughter, to the pilot of the plane, to the young air hostess and aging actress who both foster quiet affection from the man. The story is told by Dr. Dennis Scott - Honey's boss - which is one of the techniques I love about Nevil Shute books.Although this wasn't a thriller or action novel by any stretch of the imagination - I found myself holding my breath during important meetings, and at key moments. I stayed up way later than intended to get it finished.