Gentlemen of Adventure

Gann uses real people and places in this exciting story of two men who share the love of flying - one more reckless and wild than the other. Story takes place from nearly the dawn of aviation to the era of the big airlines. Good story line and better characters. A page turner.

From a barnstormer named Glenn Martin to the Blue Angels in the mid 1950s, with stops at World Wars One and Two, the open cockpit airmail, the National Air Races, Hollywood, Gann's climactic work has it all! Boyhood chums Toby Bryant and Kiffin Draper begin by meeting Glenn L. Martin in an Iowa field, fly for France and, with Toby's wife Lily, barnstorm until the DH 4 has to be abandoned in a daring aerial rescue. Toby flies the mail with Lindberg and Sloniger before settling in to a career with TWA, Kiffin will add things like racing, Hollywood, the Spanish Civil War, RAF and test piloting to his resume. Lily, in addition to silently bearing the truly heavy emotional burdens of the three, will be a CPT instructor, WASP and Powder Puff regular. All of this told as only Gann could possibly tell it, he who himself strove to be both the steady Toby and the eternal boy Kiffin, and who seemed to find in later decades, in Dodie, his Lily. This is the magnum opus of the man who taught so many of us to love the sky.

In Gentlemen of Adventure, Gann continues his tradition - weaving a "people" story around (one of) his area(s) of expertise - flying. The characters are interesting, the plot is well developed, and I liked it. At one point I thought I had caught Mr. Gann in an historical contradiction. However - yes - Boeing did introduce the pressurized model 307 Stratoliner before Pearl Harbor. It's not his best book, but certainly well worth a read. I preferred "The High and the Mighty" in aviation fiction, and "The Antagonists" and/or "Twilight for the Gods" in his non-flying fiction.A minor (but obtrusive) point: My copy (Arbor House, 1983) suffers considerably from electronic spell-checking as a substitute for proofreading - in which the wrong correctly-spelled word is frequently substituted for a misspelled (or unrecognized) word.

This book is recommended especially for any reader with an interest in aviation, but may also have appeal to those who love stories of friendships made for life. Following the characters through their adventures, joy and sorrow will move any reader and touch them perhaps like no other book has. It is a shame that more of this authors books are not readily available and being published still.