There is nothing stingy about Ernest K. Gann's sense of melodrama in his new novel, "The High and the Mighty."

The serious reader, if he hasn't already jet-propelled himself elsewhere, will, of course, find a twenty-second character aboard who lends a somber note to the hectic doings on plane 420: his name is Death. "The High and the Mighty" is, in a sense, a study of men and women on the edge of destruction (aren't they always?), of the thoughts they think as they are about to die, of the answers they're ready with if they could but live.

All of these people are picked with a kind of relentlessly obvious factitiousness; their ironies are leaden; their commingled climaxes have the novelty of a firecracker after a dozen have been discharged; they achieve a quality of antique surprise. (p. 17)

The odd thing is, however, that you really don't have...