The Shepherd

There's a soggy plum of a Christmas message at the core of this otherwise crisply told air adventure. The book is slight, hardly more than a long short story, and marks a change from the plot complexities of Forsyth's popular thrillers. A young RAF pilot on Christmas Eve, 1957, is heading home across the North Sea from Germany when the electrical system of his jet fighter fails. Without instrument bearings he has no way to land, and to bail out into the icy sea would be almost certain death. He zigzags in hopes of being noticed on a radar screen so that a rescue plane - a shepherd - will be sent up to guide him down through the fog. One finally does, an ancient piston-engined plane out of World War II. After a hair-raising landing, he tries to fad out who his benefactor is. The cliche answer will surprise few readers of old-fashioned tales. Forsyth writes with superb clarity about anything technical; one feels after closing the book that one could pilot a small jet without further instructions. Too bad he twists a faded ribbon around such shiny machinery - though that might be just the thing to set the book off. (Kirkus Reviews)