No Highway

Engineering manager misinterprets research and luckily finds a structural failure. The "Reindeer" incident in the novel is unrelated to the failure due to metal fatigue of the "Comet", from de Havilland - a company the author worked for before writing this.

The story is told from the perspective of the head of the structural engineering department. His most interesting employee is scientist Theodore Honey, who becomes the main character in the film. Honey is researching metal fatigue and Scott grills him on it, deciding that Honey is predicting fatigue failures at 1440 hours. The rest of the novel turns on this prediction. Also unlike the film, the main focus is on the human interactions.

This book was mentioned in >To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, and that may have pushed me to see the film. Now 16 years later, I am glad to reread the book. It's good, not great, probably 3.5 stars. Weird that most blurbs focus on Honey as the main character - perhaps they too were written after the film. Speaking of which, time to rewatch Henry Koster's film with Jimmy Stewart as Theodore Honey.