Flying To Pieces

By Dean Ing

Book Overview

In 1997 they seem to be just a bunch of raunchy old men with wild stories to tell anyone who will listen, but once they were the hottest pilots in the Pacific - men who could fly anything, anywhere, any time. And they've just been handed the chance of a lifetime. Elmo Benteen has called an Emergency - a sudden invitation to all his old flying buddies to come to his airfield for a weekend of drinking and carousing and swapping old stories. But this emergency is a real one. Benteen is dying, and there's a secret that he doesn't want to take to the grave with him. Benteen, who flew transport planes in the Pacific after the war, knows where to find a cache of old Japanese air force planes - not wrecks lying all over the floor of some jungle, but planes in pristine condition, properly mothballed and stored before the end of the war. The planes are worth millions on the aircraft collector's market. Elmo wants his old buddies to go get them and split the proceeds with his only child. There are only a few small problems - how the heck do a group or retirees raise the money to finance a salvage mission of this size, without alerting every other treasure hunter on the face of the earth? And without alerting the native inhabitants of the island to the value of the planes?

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312857411
• ISBN13: 9780312857417
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 349 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

A good way to kill a rainy Saturday...

was what I thought when I found this copy in a box of donated paperbacks on my first Iraq tour. I love old WWII airplanes, goofy adventures, and grew up around my grandfather and all his WWII buddies listening to wild tales. I'd drop papers for 30 days' leave and cast my lot in with a caper like this in a heartbeat if the old guys asked. Tons of fun, but with just enough cliches to keep it from getting that fifth star.

Great Story!!

Flying to Pieces was an excellent book, with thoroughly deep characters and an engrossing plot. Ing weaves a masterful book together with a few special surprises in the end. Loved the name of the group, B.O.F. (Boring Old Farts)

A fun comic adventure

Ing's recent books, Spooker and Butcher Bird have been thrillers, with tension and suspence as characters narrowly escape death, capture, doom. Ing's characters share center stage with great machines. Flying to Pieces is something new: funny. The plot includes interesting machines in the form of preserved warplanes, but the story is about a group of old farts (and one grandson) off on a treasure hunt. I am reminded of Donald Westlake's comic caper novels, only here the characters might possibly be legal, trying to follow a treasure map to a hidden cache of antique planes on a Pacific island. There are lots of sidetrips and background on characters, so the book is leisurely if one is expecting a fast paced thriller, but a full sized and thoroughly enjoyable read if one wants a light hearted treasure hunt by a bunch of old farts.