NO HIGHWAY

A disappointment from Nevil Shute, who somehow- for this reader- does not come to grips with the potentials of his story, which fuses fiction and science. He fails to make the story come clear or the characters emerge from two dimensional patterns. Mr. Honey is a fuzzy-minded little man, on practical planes- but a scientist working in the abstractions of fatigue in light alloy structures in the structural department of the Royal Aircraft Establishment. His test is far from completed, but his projection is astonishingly exact- and the proof may cost the lives of transatlantic passengers. Just how he insures their safety- and how romance comes to him through two fellow passengers makes an odd blend of science and sentiment. Nevil Shute has given us better books.