One of Max Beerbohm's short stories deals with the predicament of a man who, by means of palmistry, suddenly becomes aware of imminent disaster threatening the public conveyance in which he is traveling—in his case a train. Mr. Nevil Shute, in his new novel, "No Highway," makes it a trans-Atlantic air liner, while his machinery of doom involves such scientific stuff as the fatigue point of metals after calculated stresses. The result is just as exciting and rather more plausible….

One thing more certain than fatigue in metals is the absence of fatigue in reading Mr. Shute's novels. He has the knack of leading the reader quietly yet breathlessly from one suspense to another. The plot of "No Highway" is ingenious, even for its author, who has invented many such in his time; it builds absorbing as well as literate entertainment, and probably no author now writing...