Mile High (Windy City Series Book 1)

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Throw in a bit of humour to the heady plot, combine with some potent pills and you have an inflammatory mix of personalities and situations. Everything was tied at the end nicely. As always, it was full of scandals, mysteries (even though a bit disappointing), sex and glamour. Overall, I enjoyed the book. I love Rebecca Chance and I always look forward to reading her books. I have read most of her work by this point. According to "Mile High," it is not the Mafia that is moving into business; Condon's thesis is that the Mafia was the tool of "legitimate" business from the beginning, that the heroin pumped into our children's arms has been sent there by respectable American businessmen.... The story is for the most part set inside an airplane, on the inaugural flight of Pure Air's LuxeLiner from London to Los Angeles. Passengers would normally already bathe in luxury beyond anything offered by competitive aviation companies, but as this is their very first flight promoting the exorbitant services they're going a step further with the publicity campaign and they've roped in a group of celebrities to be the first to enjoy the full-sized sleeping pods, freshly steamed lobsters and the rest of the decadence offered in the air.

I loved getting to know all of the different characters and there own individual stories which you get to discover as you progress through the book. The title, for only the second time in Condon's eight novels, is not derived from a fictitious Keener's Manual mentioned in most of his earlier novels. Only his second, and most famous work, The Manchurian Candidate, had not previously used doggerel from the Manual as a title source. When the characters were already talking (although mostly I had a feeling that this book is one long narration, as so few interactions took place there) I wasn't sure if they are eventually going to come to a conclusion, because there was so much inner monologuing between the lines that I really mostly lost my hope to get to the point sometime. I loved the bitchy comments that came out from some of the cabin crew, comments that Judge Rinder would have been proud of! In fact, I think I would have quite liked to work that flight! I am a little disappointed, because there was so much potential in this story - setting the novel on a plane was in my opinion a brilliant idea, just imagine, a ten - hour flight, you are closed on a plane with a murderer, stalker, singer, actress and other VIPs - how much can happen? Much! At least I've expected tons of action, but it was slow, too slow for my liking, and the tension was not as palpable as I'd like it to be.Mile High is Rebecca Chance's eighth novel. I've been a fan of Rebecca's for a long time, her books are fun, indulgent, glamorous, flamboyant and saucy. Mile High seems to be the beginning of a new journey for Rebecca, she has a new publisher, the cover is completely different to her previous books and Mile High is most certainly falls more into the thriller genre, albeit a very glamorous thriller. I didn't really enjoy this book, having to skim read made it a bit disjointed for me but to wade my way through endless narrative looking to spot the point of it all was very tiresome. Maybe it jut wasn't for me, I wouldn't say don't read it but if you do don't expect too much. Not really memorable or exciting enough for me to award it any more than 3 stars. I absolutely love this author, as I always know that when a read one of Rebecca's books, I know that I'm in for a treat. Pure indulgence on so many levels, it's got everything. Catalina, one of the celebrities had to deal with a lot throughout the flight. Her stalker is on board and that added a lot of mystery. I changed my mind about who the stalker was several times.

Despite the cult that has grown up around Condon, he is not really a great novelist, and certainly makes no pretensions about the value of his work. But as a practitioner of the fiction of information, no one else comes close to him.... I liked the bitching among the crew the best to be honest. I was expecting to like the mystery of the stalker as well as the murderer but I was really disappointed to read about both of them. I figured out the stalker pretty early. With the murderer, there wasn't enough to go on. I think Rebecca Chance wanted to add more drama and more interest by revealing that there is a murderer onboard but didn't elaborate anything. The murderer was barely mentioned few times save for an introduction. I have read a few books in this genre recently and I would probably have to consider them now to be my guilty pleasure. They, to me anyway, are delicious escapism. Larger than life characters with bank balances to match doing the things that people with too much money are destined to do but at the same time, falling into all the pitfalls that accompany that kind of behaviour / lifestyle. I’d never read a Rebecca Chance novel, so when I was asked if I’d like to read and review Mile High for part of her blog tour I jumped at the chance having heard so many fabulous things about her writing and after meeting her at a book event in London.They might be, except that Condon loses his balance and—odd for him—goes off the shallow end. For the first time in eight novels, he wavers from his delightful obsession that maniacal rigidity is civilization's main motivating force and therefore the only human quirk worth a novelist's attention.... Then we have the crew who is so bitchy that they seemed more entertaining than the actual entertainers on the flight. There are different levels of crew depending on which airline they work for and it creates a class difference. Crew working for high-class airline look down on the crew working on budget airlines. Mile High is my first book by Rebecca Chance, but I had heard great things about her previous books so I was really excited to start it. The first that caught my attention in this book was its third person narrative. It was told from multiple points of views but it had a bit of an impersonal touch, so it was difficult for me to really connect with the characters. I felt, at the beginning, as if I was reading a very long magazine article rather than a book. But once I got used to this style and started knowing all the key characters better, I started enjoying the story a lot more. And I have to admit that with this narrative, it was totally impossible to guess who the stalker was, so Rebecca managed to keep me wondering until the very last minute.