Shooting Script
 First edition | |
| Author | Gavin Lyall |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Thriller novel |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
Publication date | 1966 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 254pp |
| OCLC | 17764534 |
| Preceded by | Midnight Plus One |
| Followed by | Venus With Pistol |
Shooting Script is a first person narrative novel by English author Gavin Lyall, first published in 1966. The book was selected as number 99 in the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, a list published by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.[1]
Plot introduction
Keith Carr, an ex-Royal Air Force fighter pilot with combat experience in the Korean War is now living in Jamaica, where he makes a threadbare living flying charter cargo flights around the Caribbean in his mortgaged second-hand de Havilland Dove. After a rival pilot from his Korean War days lands a high-priced job commanding a squadron of de Havilland Vampire jet fighters for the hard-line military dictators on the nearby island nation of “Republica Libra”, Carr suddenly finds life more difficult. For some reason, the United States FBI is keeping him under surveillance. Republica Libra at first offers him a job, and then impounds his plane when he refuses – and one of his flying students ends up murdered. Carr is hired by the flamboyant movie director Walt Whitmore, who is filming an action movie on the north coast of Jamaica, and Carr is assigned to fly an old World War II vintage B-25 Mitchell medium bomber as a camera plane. However, it soon becomes apparent that Whitmore has more in mind for Carr and the decrepit bomber than just making a film. The character of Whitmore was inspired by John Wayne, with whom Lyall spent four days at a studio while Wayne was filming.