Mayday, by Nelson DeMille and Thomas Block, is probably the best disaster novel ever written. There are a number of reasons, including that it was written at the tail-end of the 70s and could take in all that could be learnt from movies such as Airport, Airport 1975, Airport '77, Airport '79: Concorde and the classics that are The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and Earthquake!

But the hands-down best reason is that it plays on everyone's deep-seated fear of the retarded.

The plot is this: an advanced passenger plane, a Straton something-or-other, which flies at around 62,000 feet is accidentally hit by a dummy missile fired as part of a secret illegal Navy experiment. The missile, which has no warhead, does not destroy the plane, but punches a hole right through it, de-pressurising the plane. Five of the passengers and crew survive this because they were in the toilets, which lost pressure less quickly than the rest of the plane.

Those involved in the secret illegal Navy experiment, when they find out what they've hit and thinking that everyone on board died, want the evidence destroyed. They hold off when they see the plane change course under control of the survivors.

Meanwhile, the five survivors discover that the de-pressurisation didn't kill off their fellow passengers and crew - just turned them into brain-damaged zombies who drool, moan, slur whatever words you say back to you, rape or - in the case of the co-pilot - just really, really, really want to get back into their cockpit where their wheel is.

And when the airline's insurance company rep realizes there are 300 retards on board and his company will have to support them for ever, he hatches a plan with one of the airline's execs to crash the plane over the Pacific...

It's a pretty awesome combination - although a made-for-TV version appears to be hated by all.