Flight of Dreams in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 29, 2021 Kay rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fict, e-book, fiction, available-mcpl, mystery-suspense-crime

Too much romance, not enough Hindenburg. Granted, I have a very low tolerance for romance, so take that into consideration. Still, I was disappointed as this book quickly settled into a story of two doomed lovers and the various doings of a handful of passengers on the Hindenburg. There was a mysterious man with revenge on his mind and a secret mission that could have been made more interesting, and ultimately that pans out with less suspense than I'd hope.

Still, I'm well aware that many fans o ...more

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Feb 15, 2016 Lisa of Hopewell rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2016, mmd-summer-read-g

In Ariel Lawhon’s new novel, Flight of Dreams, we learn much more about the Hindenburg and let me say this book is a thriller from start to finish! It’s just aching to be made into a costume drama for PBS’s MASTERPIECE! With a character’s story lines zinging by ala Downton Abbey and Gosford Park there is no time to be anywhere but on the edge of your seat.

Like Downton and Gosford, the cast is wide and rich. The ship’s company is well-represented by the token woman, the young cabin boy, a navigat ...more

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Feb 27, 2016 Tony rated it it was amazing

Shelves: novels, own-loanable, thriller, espionage, historical-fiction

Wow -- this is a spectacularly entertaining work of historical fiction based around something I had no particular interest in before picking this book up. I mean, what's to know about the Hindenburg other than it blew up docking in the US in the 1930s more or less putting an end to the era of passenger dirigibles? Despite what we think we know, Lawhorn has turned the Hindenburg's final days of flight into a page-turner that's part thriller, part love story, and saturated with period detail.

Takin Wow -- this is a spectacularly entertaining work of historical fiction based around something I had no particular interest in before picking this book up. I mean, what's to know about the Hindenburg other than it blew up docking in the US in the 1930s more or less putting an end to the era of passenger dirigibles? Despite what we think we know, Lawhorn has turned the Hindenburg's final days of flight into a page-turner that's part thriller, part love story, and saturated with period detail.

Taking the real life passenger list as the basis for her cast of characters, and various theories for the cause of the explosion as the seeds for her plot, she's created a vivid ensemble of lead and supporting characters, through whose eyes the reader comes to see the Hindenburg, from ornate smoking rooms and lounges, to the catwalks and gantries that lay behind the scenes. There's the navigator and stewardess who may or may not get together (she has a dark secret), there's the mysterious American "businessman" who is on board to kill someone (but who or why remains shrouded in mystery), there's a sassy German journalist and her writer husband who poke and prod for the truth, a Luftwaffe pilot officially on board as observer but possible with other motives, a teenage cabin boy with eyes for the beautiful teenage daughter of a traveling family, the ship's fussy Prussian captain, its generous French chef, and whole slew of stewards, barmen, and officers.

The overall tone is not unlike a classic Agatha Christie or similar golden-age mystery, where a varied cast of characters is constrained within a particular setting for a weekend, with intrigue abounding and hidden motives revealed. In this case, it comes with mouth-watering reconstructions of meals served, impressive sounding cocktails, and the underlying tension of the Nazi rise to power and the fact that the Hindenburg bore large swastikas on either side. Thoroughly enjoyable, the book should appeal to anyone who likes historical mysteries or page-turners. Even the ending -- which we all think we know, is a masterpiece of action writing with its own surprises. Surely destined to be a movie in five years or so. ...more

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