The Green Air

THE GREEN AIR
by
Edwin Corley (as David Harper)

Mason & Lipscomb Publishers – New York – 1973 Hardcover
Popular Library – New York – 1976 Paperback
 
The author of the bestselling novel HIJACKED now takes us into a totally different world of aviation, the world of glider pilots. A breathlessly paced novel of adventure that goes much deeper than thrills and suspense, THE GREEN AIR takes place in the turbulent vastness of the Alaskan skies, site of the World Soaring Championships. There, above treacherous ravines and snow-covered mountains, pilots from seventeen countries would pit their skills for seven grueling days against the atmosphere and each other.
 
They were a special breed of pilots, the men and women who flew sail planes. They did not fly in the normal sense – they soared – mastering skies no ordinary aircraft, or bird, could survive.
 
But, for some, more than a contest for the skies was at stake; behind the official pursuit of medals for their countries lay a complex network of private goals and passions. The American, Barney Fields, would not rest until he had set a new distance record; but his more dangerous goal, perhaps, was the beautiful Amanda Webster, wife of the mayor of Fairbanks. And the Soviet cosmonaut Major Anton Suslov, suicidally obsessed with beating the world’s altitude record, had still another conquest to consider, the French aviatrix Renee Duval. If he could not defeat superb technique in the skies, perhaps a different, no less exciting, victory was possible.
 
Before the competition ended, new records would indeed be set, and a heavy price paid – one man dead, two missing, several injured, four planes destroyed.