Getting the mail through Dead Man's Gulch has been a profitable occupation for novelists since the days of the pony express. Mr. Gann brings the subject up to date with a novel ["Blaze of Noon"] about the pioneering days of air mail and shows that neither time nor technology has daunted the spirit of adventure which attends the delivery of a first-class letter….

Mr. Gann is at his best in transporting you through a cumulonimbus cloud, or landing you at a fogged-in airport. When the youngest MacDonald and the Girl "meet cute," however (she is a nurse with whom he falls in love while reading an eye chart), we know that the author has his eye cocked on Hollywood. From there on he sets his course somewhere between Buffalo, the airline terminus, and Southern California. The results, fortunately, are not as bad as they might be. Mr. Gann...