High Flyer, The

What an interesting and unique mystery novel this was. Author Elizabeth Darrell surprised me with almost everything about this story. First we have a main character whom I really had to work hard to care about since he was definitely more on the anti-hero side than is usual. Then there was all the information about proving the worthiness of a new type of fighter airplane in the years between the world wars. Finally, the members of the Lance family weren't exactly paragons of virtue for me to form warm attachments to. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the novel.

Chris Peterson married into the Lance family, owners of Marshfield Aviation, as an aviation hero from World War I so it was big news when dignitaries and important men in the government were invited to watch his test flight of a prototype fighter plane. Only Captain Ben Norton knows the secret Peterson has carried all these years and that day he was on hand to watch his former friend prove the worth of this new weapon of war. After the test flight, he was going to confront Peterson and force his own agenda on him or ruin the man's reputation. Ben Norton will use every situation to cement his own place in Marshfield Aviation, but someone is trying to make sure he doesn't live to make his own test flight of the Lance.

The main character in this novel is not a standard issue hero. He isn't honorable, he doesn't have a pristine past, he doesn't have pure motives and yet the author managed to interest me in him enough to get me firmly hooked on wanting to know what was going to happen in the novel. The small village atmosphere of the time period was very well presented and the truth about many of the characters was held back until the very end so I was never quite sure of what the resolution for the story would be. There are many unusual happenings which Ben has to solve along with his constant need to keep large portions of his past hidden. These things created a goodly amount of tension within the novel. The police don't come off looking very effective in their investigations so that was yet another deviation from the standard mystery novel. I had not read any other book by this author, but by doing some investigating I see that she has many to choose from for continuing to read her work. This is the first book in the Ben Norton series so evidently there are more good stories to come our way.

I received an e-ARC of this novel through NetGalley and Severn House.