Early reviews of Portland author Dana Haynes’ new thriller, Crashers, have been habitually positive. Lovers of the thriller genre express repeated delight to find something entirely fresh inside the pages of Crashers, without the sacrifice of the traditional structure and pace of the genre. The story concerns a team of National Transportation Safety Board crash investigators who have mere days to discover what malice brought down a jetliner in a field outside of Salem. The truth is uncovered in an exhilarating tangle of terrorist subplots and intrigue.
Haynes says his own fascination with the science of crash investigation forced him to write the book. “I read a fantastic article in The New Yorker in 1996 about the NTSB and crash investigations. I thought, Wow! Someone’s going to write a great novel about these ‘Crashers.’ So I waited. And waited. Nada. Finally, in 1999, I realized I’d have to do it. “
The book was written quickly and immediately began to attract attention from agents. Unfortunately, it was ill-timed in other regards.
Haynes said, “I wrote the story in 2000 and got an agent in August 2001. And one month later, on Sept. 11, this became a completely unmarketable novel. So I put it on a shelf for about seven years. I got a new agent in November 2008 and she got me a two-book deal with St. Martin’s Press in February 2009.”
One of the more impressive aspects of Haynes’ work is the depth of his research and the thoroughness of his details, especially considering the rarity of the subject matter.
“I took a year to do the research on airplanes, wings, engines, etc., using Powell’s technical store, interviews and the Internet. Please realize I fictionalized much of the actual process the NTSB goes through in a crash investigation. The real Crashers are going to hate this book. I compress 18 months or so of work into four or five days. But a lot of the little, technical details are real and came from a year of research.”
Crashers is not Haynes’ first book. He was already published by the age of 24, in the genre of fair-play mystery. He says Crashers is quite different from his three prior books, written under the name Conrad Haynes.
“Well, I’m a much better writer now. I wrote the first Harry Bishop mystery when I was about 24. How obnoxious is that? Second, the Harry Bishop novels are straight-up murder mysteries. Crashers is a thriller, although my pivot foot is still firmly planted in the mystery field.”
Because of the effort involved in his technical research, Haynes set the book in familiar surroundings to save time. When he wrote the book he was commuting between his home in Portland and his job as editor of the Statesman Journal. He daily drove past the field he would soon (fictionally) crash a jetliner into to kick off his fast paced thriller.
Some early readers are already hoping Crashers will be the first in a long series. Haynes can confirm that a sequel has already been written, by his publisher’s request.
Haynes doesn‘t think of himself as a writer with a message. But he does have a goal. “I write for myself. In the 15 years that passed between my last books, I wrote five unrelated novels and four or five screenplays. The screenplay adaptation of Crashers made it to the semi-finals of a contest put on by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And my goal, the whole time, was to tell stories that entertain me. I like to say I was unpublished for 15 years but I was totally nailing my demographic the whole time.
So now that my book is coming out, all I want to do is entertain readers and keep them on the edge of their seats. There is no message in Crashers – other than it’s a celebration of really smart people working hard and together.”
Crashers hits bookstores on June 22nd, including promised prominent displays in both Borders and Barnes & Noble. There is a launch party scheduled for the book at Powell’s in Beaverton, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., at 4 p.m. Saturday, June 26. Find out more about Dana Haynes and his work at dana-haynes.com.
