MURDER IN PLANE SIGHT --Review

MURDER IN PLANE SIGHT by Julie Holmes ISBN:979-8-9914430-7-4 Pulished by Mayhem Books, 2025 Note that the title of this story is not misspelled. Principal character in this emotional crime novel is Sierra Bauer. She's an unusual young woman in an unusual career. Skilled and competent, forthright and often blunt speaking, she works carefully and grittily as a trained licensed aircraft mechanic at the Minneapolis/Saint Paul Airport. Specifically she's a designated air-frame and powerplant mechanic, which meant she was certified by the FAA to wok on a new small passenger planes being introduced to their fleet at Range Air, a Detroit-based commercial airline company. The author introduces discomfort very early, even before Sierra arrives for her January night shift at Range Air's maintenance hanger. But then the body of another employee is discovered in a recently arrived Rnfge Air passenger aircraft. The novel is replete with fascinating details of FAA rules and air safety regulations. They are presented in such a way as to inflate reader's satisfaction and trust of air travel safety for the reader and at the same time helping to move the plot forward. Enter the cop. Quinn Moore is a tall experienced cop employed by the MSP airport and assigned to sort out the discovery of the dead employee. The interview Detective Moore conducts with distraut Sierra Bauer, in spite of the suspicion he radiates, is also clearly the beginning of a different kind of relationship. All the relationships are complicated and a budding romance only adds to the confusion. Ultimately resolutions are sorted. The pace of the novel and the competent writing will carry readers along with the necesary level of satifaction. The plot is excellent, the main characters are well-drawn and the necessary descriptive segments are well-handled and motivate the reader. The only real difficulty is the length. There are too many development paragraphs which slow plot movement beyond what is truly useful.