Marathon Man

 

Marathon Man – William Goldman

I bought this one as a Kindle Special mainly because I recognized the title as being a popular 50-year-old movie (yes, the 1970s WERE 50 years ago).  It’s always a bigger temptation for me to buy a book that I’m at least somewhat familiar with than it is to be wooed by a nice book cover or a compelling synopsis.  Sometimes I’m happy with my purchase, other times I’m not (I made a similar purchase a year ago, buying the book “Bridge of Spies” that Steven Spielberg made into a movie.  That books was awful.  The movie I haven’t seen).  Fortunately, this book was very good, and I actually watched the movie in my living room only an hour or so after I finished the book.  Thank you Amazon Prime.

This is a book that takes a bit for the story to fall into place. We’re not really sure where we’re going here.  The story begins with two old drivers in New York City embattled in “road rage” that ends up catastrophically for both.  We then are jarred to reading about a secret agent named “Scylla” who does a lot of shady work underground. It seems Scylla is always about to be killed by a sneaky adversary, or is himself trying to kill other sneaky adversaries.  We then jump to the actual “Marathon Man” - a young graduate student who lives in rather squalid conditions in New York City who is training to run marathons. Tom “Babe” Levy ends up being our main character.  He has a bit of an unpleasant past. We’re told his father committed suicide after being targeted by the Joseph McCarthy witch hunts, and there’s no mother either.  His only living relative is his older brother “Doc” who we read about from time to time. So Babe is a bit of a loner.

Although it took a while to figure out where this story was going, I was never bored.  Author William Goldman does an excellent job telling his readers what and how his characters THINK and FEEL and although I wasn’t sure how things would all tie together, I didn’t mind being in the dark for quite a while.   When the pieces DO finally start to come together, I must admit I was hooked.  I found the second half of this story to be a phenomenal page turner and there were many intriguing twists that caused me to think “Whoa! I did NOT see THAT coming!”  As I’ve already mentioned, I watched the movie immediately after I finished this story.  If that isn’t a sign of a good book, I don’t know what is.

It must be pointed out that we need to remember how long ago the 1970s were.  I was still a kid back then (which is why I didn’t see the R-rated movie at the time), but there’s so many things that we see in this movie that make an older person chuckle as they remember things such as Watergate and the Bicentennial. At one point, Babe writes his brother a letter.  On pen and paper.  And then puts it in an envelope and mails it.   It all seems so strange now.  It also seems quite bizarre to remember a time when people didn’t carry around a cell phone in their back pockets.  So many stories like this one that were written pre 2000 just can’t be “modernized” as the technology simply has made the world way too different a place. Nowadays, if one is being chased through the dark deserted streets of New York City at 3 a.m., they can just pull out their smart phone and dial 911.  They didn’t need to find a pay phone; or a dime.

And then we come to the fact that in 1973, World War II and the Holocaust weren’t that long ago.  The newspapers that carried the brutal stories of Hitler’s concentration camps still had not yellowed with age, and the world was still reeling from the madness.  This was especially true in the Jewish parts of New York City where it wasn’t uncommon to run into strangers who were still hand-tattooed indicating that they actually lived in, and thankfully survived, such insanity.  I mention this because this is a very key part of the eventual story.

I must also point out that sometimes when you read clandestine thrillers, it’s never easy to tie up all the loose ends and figure out exactly what everyone’s role and motivations are.  Example: There’s a very famous torture scene in this story involving a dentist.  Now, I see where torture is necessary to get the “enemy to talk” or to reveal high level state secrets that might change the direction of worldwide politics, but when I found out the “motivation” for the torture here, I never could quite figure out why torture was necessary.  Maybe I’m missing something here, but it seemed as though the author just wanted a really neat torture scene in his story (And he succeeded.  Man, did he succeed.) but it never seemed to make sense when one puts on their thinking cap and tries to rationalize things.  I guess in stories like this, the action is so good, that maybe the intention is that the reader or viewer not think and just enjoy the ride.  So don’t try to think too much when reading the story.

Speaking of the movie, I must say that I thought it was excellent as well. It stays mostly faithful to the book.  The only thing that seemed significantly different was the ending.  I read where the author wasn’t happy with the ending (when are authors ever happy when a director changes their story?) but I confess that I liked the ending of the movie better than the ending of the book.  The ending of the book, while satisfying, didn’t really seem as exciting as I thought it should be for such an exciting book.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. I highly recommend the movie as well.  If books aren’t your thing, watch the movie.  If books are your thing, watch the movie after you read the book.  Of course, a lot of the excitement will be gone because you’ll know a lot of the “ah-has!” but the movie was a very good adaptation overall.

Later

 

Later – Stephen King

Do NOT be fooled by this 1950’s pulp-like book cover. Don’t be fooled by the tagline “The Hard Case Crime Novels of Stephen King” either.  This is not any sort of new genre than Stephen King is dabbing his finger in for some sort of writing style variety.  No, this book is your typical Stephen King creepy, leave-a-light-on-when-you-sleep story.  That’s not a bad thing when he tells the story well, which he does so here.  I just find it somewhat puzzling that he “disguises” some of his books from time to time with these stereotypical “true crime” covers.  Maybe it’s the publisher’s decision. Maybe it’s an accountant’s move.  There’s a lot of weird hand shaking and back slapping in the entertainment business, and the almighty dollar always reigns. Even a brilliant and popular author such as Stephen King can easily get sucked into all that unpleasantness when contracts are being signed.  Anyway…

Our story consists of a successful book editor and her very young son, Jamie.  Jamie is one of those kids with a peculiar “gift” that only exists in scary movies and wacky YouTube conspiracy videos.  Jamie’s “gift” can also be looked at as a curse (of course).  When mom finds out about Jamie’s gift (there’s no dad in this story) she’s perplexed, mystified, a bit skeptical, but mostly just wants to protect her young son and ensure that he has as normal a life as possible.

It just so happens that we come across a situation where Jamie can use his peculiar ability to help save Mom’s job.  They live pretty comfortably in the penthouses of New York, and without Jamie’s help, they can soon find themselves destitute overnight and living on skid row.  The only other person who knows about Jamie’s gift is mom’s girlfriend, who happens to be a cop.  So this, dear reader, is how we can somehow turn our story into a “crime novel”.   When a cop gets involved, there’s all sorts of goodies that can be achieved in the field of policework with someone with a gift like young Jamie.

Well it doesn’t take a genius to remember the story of Pandora’s Box, and let’s just say that nothing is as never neat and tidy as it seems.  When one tempts the universe with bizarre supernatural abilities, it doesn’t take long before the universe seems to say “You’re not supposed to do that, so it’s time you pay the price”.

So if you’ve read this so far (and I’m trying hard not to divulge much of the actual plot), you can probably already tell that this sort of story is right up Stephen King’s alley.  The book itself is rather short, and it can almost serve as one story in one of King’s ubiquitous “four novella” books.  Overall I enjoyed the book and can’t find anything silly or stupid that sometimes can wedge their way into Mr. King’s strange tales.  I will say that the very ending of this book seemed a bit forced an unnecessary. It didn’t hurt the story at all, it was more like a ridiculous coda.  Fortunately when the ending isn’t particularly welcome but has no bearing on the tale itself, it’s easy to forget.   The story, however, was a good one.  But please don’t think this is some sort of Micky Spillane crime story.  Don’t ever judge a book by it’s cover. Especially in this case.

Fairy Tale

 

Fairy Tale – Stephen King

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of a “fairy tale” is a sweet, somewhat innocent story that parents read to their 4-year-old child at bedtime.  So a Stephen King “fairy tale” seems a bit of an oxymoron.  Of course, Stephen King has proven that he can write well in multiple genres, so maybe he’s writing a sweet, kiddie friendly six-hundred-page story?  Well, no. Such isn’t the case, which probably isn’t surprising to anybody.  In fact, we learn from Stephen King when reading this book that many of the childhood Disney stories that kids were raised on, were actually much darker in their original format.

So, yes, this is in fact a “fairy tale”, but one with heavy Stephen King leanings.  This isn’t a bad thing. I’ve mentioned in many of my reviews of Mr. King’s work that “horror” is actually a bit of an unfair monicker to be placed on his style. Yes, he’s written (successfully) within the horror genre, but his body of work goes much further.  Creepy, weird, and mostly unrealistic seem to be better descriptions of his work.  In many cases his books remind me of old The Twilight Zone episodes. His books tend to be disturbing and strange, but not necessary filled with horror.

Fairy Tale meets such descriptions.  Reading this story made me think a lot about his Dark Tower Series, his co-authored work The Talisman, and it even kind of had a hint of Pet Semetary.  We begin the story in a “normal” world, and King pushes us within a mysterious parallel universe where the bulk of our adventure takes place.

The story is told in first person by 17-year-old Charlie Reade.  Now, before Reade plunges his listener into his fairy tale, he has to tell us another story before we can truly appreciate his journey.  This story takes places in the real world and is much more believable. If we really want to split hairs, Reade (King) even manages to tell yet another story leading to the story that leads to the main story. So a lot of setup here before we actually get going.  This, though, isn’t a bad thing.  King has proven that whatever the tale, he’s good and keeping things interesting.  So when we read about Charlie Reade’s life story for the first 1/3 of the book or so, we never feel impatient, or that our time is being wasted.  In fact, in many ways I enjoyed the “pre tale” rooted somewhat in reality more than the “fairy tale” once we finally arrive there.

I try very hard to reveal as little of the plot of a book when writing a review, but I must say that I found Charlie’s motivation to go to such an unknown dangerous place to be a bit silly and unbelievable.  If you’ve read the above-mentioned books Pet Semetary and The Talisman, you can easily see why the main character in those stories set out to do what they wanted to accomplish.  When loved ones are at stake, we would all do the unthinkable to save them, but the premise in this book was just too hard for me to believe.

Charlie Reade’s adventures are well thought out and executed very well.  I didn’t feel as though the actual action was forced or unnecessary.  This is one of those books that would make an outstanding movie if the right director were put in charge.  I can also see a movie based on this to be an unwatchable mess, though, if the creators of said film don’t give the story the attention it deserves.  This book features a lot of bizarre beings and creatures that are sometimes best when they’re shown to us instead of us reading about them and trying to formulate how such beings actually look and sound.  Think of it this way: If you never saw any of the Star Wars movies, do you think you brain could feasibly come up with what a “Chewbacca” or a “Jabba the Hut” is really supposed to look and act like?

This novel is a good addition to Stephen King’s already massive catalog, and despite what you might think when you see the title of this book, this thing is definitely right up Stephen King’s alley.