But I don't agree with those who decry movie elements in fiction. As "In Plane View" demonstrates aptly, a good tale is a good tale. And this entertaining little thriller qualifies big time on the scale of entertainment. It's a sizzling narrative featuring a damsel-in-distress, but not only of those namby-pamby ladies from Victorian fiction. Paige Lewis is an independent and no-nonsense computer hacker who works for the good guys, not the crooks.

When two airliners crash into each other over O'Hare Airport in Chicago, with a resulting loss of more than 400 lives, investigators determine that the reason could have been an illicit break-in to the air traffic controller system. Lewis gets the call to help probers find how and who penetrated the computers, resulting in a massive loss of passengers.

The book opens with a three-way parade of disasters. Besides the plane crash, there's a deadly derailment of a passenger train and a disastrous foul-up of communications on Wall Street, causing havoc on the stock market. "In Plane View" details these events in stark, compelling snippets, then skillfully weaves in the background of its heroine while keeping the story moving at a breakneck pace.

There is a reasonable amount of computer shop-talk as Paige seeks to figure out what happened. But even those unacquainted with computers shouldn't have much trouble figuring it out. If you saw the Sandra Bullock thriller, "The Net," then you'll do just fine with "In Plane View."

Author McClellan shows plenty of evidence that he's comfortable with the genre. His writing, which occasionally employs an excess of cliches, settles down in the last half of the story to deliver knuckle-chewing suspense.

McClellan lives in Charleston, W.Va., where he works as a network analyst for Columbia Natural Resources. He's a graduate of West Virginia Institute of Technology, where this columnist went to college many moons ago.

"In Plane View," in a handsome trade paperback edition, is available for $6.95 from the leading online bookseller Barnes & Noble. You also can order it from Morris Publishing, P.O. Box 75281, Charleston, West Virginia 25375

Trespassing on Nature

Actually, I had forgotten about the book, released back in May. My copy got covered up by more recent books that keep the UPS delivery lady making almost daily visits to the Powers household.

Startled by the inquiry, I said that, of course, I would read it and write about it. Hanging up, I came to my senses and wondered why I'd agreed to dig into a book with such an uninteresting title.

A few pages later, I was hooked. John Hanson Mitchell is perhaps the best author on nature working today, and this book is a beautifully written treatise that explores history, nature, travel, and many other topics, fashioned in a style that will provoke readers despite the seeming lack of an arresting theme.

Mitchell believes the only way to learn about something is to "break through boundaries." In "Trespassing," he asks,

"Who really owns any land for that matter? How do you determine where the boundaries lie exactly while you are out walking, and if you happen to cross an imaginary line, one run out and recorded on a piece of paper and filed in a registry of deeds, what does it matter? The other living things of the tract, which I am informed by legal authorities do not as yet have any rights, freely cross and recross the property lines of this piece of earth. (Earlier) I probably could have ranged over this land at will. Now the laws have changed, and what,s owned is owned outright and in entirety by its heirs and assigns forever and forever."

Mitchell observes that the idea of land as property did not take hold until the eighteenth century and "you bought the right to live there or the right to use it; you did not actually own the ground."

On this basis, Mitchell writes about the history of a certain piece of property in Massachusetts, which was bargained away by Native Americans. He explores every nook and cranny of that land, then visits and gets to know various characters who play a role in land ownership today. Kirkus Reviews calls the book "a Thoreauvian ramble through English common law, American history, the New England landscape, and much else." I would agree with the reviewer's conclusion that "Trespassing" is a "thoughtful, beautifully written addition to environmental and regional literature."

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