Can a skilled writer still mine nuggets of suspense from the overworked streams of NASA and its back-burnered space program? Michael Cassutt, who collaborated with Mercury astronaut Deke Slayton on his autobiography, Deke!, proves it can be done. In a technothriller as sharp and scary as any in recent memory, Cassutt tells the story of rookie astronaut Mark Koskinen, whose training partner--legendary veteran Joe Buerhle--is killed in a light plane crash after exhibiting some very strange behavior. Even stranger is the way the NASA investigators looking into the crash seem to want to blame Koskinen. To save his career and quite possibly his life, Mark has to find out who inside the vast space agency wanted Buerhle out of the way. Cassutt, who also wrote the classic reference book Who"s Who in Space, has enough insider knowledge to make it all seem totally believable and enough fictional talent to keep several strong plot lines floating around in space at the same time. --Dick Adler