NIGHT OF THE RUNNING MAN

A second-rate chase novel about a man on the run from a Vegas contract killer. Cab-driver Jerry Logan, 46, living in a grubby trailer in Las Vegas, picks up a fare who wants to get to the airport in a rush: they're tailed; the fare is killed; Jerry hurries home to find that the dead man left a briefcase with $500,000 on the back seat. Mob money? Sure. But Jerry chooses to make a dash for Switzerland by way of London. And so Al Chambers, manager of the mob's Silver Tiara Hotel Casino, is sweating: he skimmed that money, and unless he gets it back, August Gurino, his Mafia employer, will get nasty to Al and his wife Roz. Al, therefore, has Jerry followed by ice-cold killer David Eckhart--a weirdo who has accidentally killed his mistress. Eckhart almost nails Jerry at the Chicago airport, but Jerry gets onto his plane while Eckhart calls fellow hit-man Derek Mills in London and passes on the recovery job. And Mills soon latches onto Jerry, boiling his feet to find the money: Jerry, however, nearly kills him with a weightlifter's weight, sneaks into a hospital, and is helped by widowed nurse Chris . . . leading up to a violent confrontation and escape to Switzerland. Exactly like dozens of other such stories--except that the hero here generates no sympathy or interest whatsoever.