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SAM SEVEN by Richard Cox

SAM SEVEN

By

Pub Date: March 1st, 1977
Publisher: Reader's Digest--dist. by T. Y. Crowell

A Palestinian terrorist cell hiding out in Paris is hit by an Israeli team that gets a secret list showing the PLO's expansion into Europe and the US. An Israeli diplomatic courier with the captured papers boards an American jet in Paris to get them to a UN special assembly. So, on a roof in London, three Palestinians with a Sam 7 guided-missile launcher blow the tail off the plane and it crashes into. . . Victoria Station at the rush hour! Right through the roof. Fuel ready to ignite floods trains, the lower floors, the sewer system. Yes, it's a disaster novel, and Cox times his various eruptions carefully for maximal tension. Every aspect of calamity--rescue, firefighting, body recovery, accident investigation, insurance binds, plus grief and panic--triggers an explosion of detail. At first we're stunned by the over-peopled plot, but ultimately some characters do make it to three dimensions. Only an LBJ-like American airlines owner, the hero's nasty wife, and the terrorists are not quite up to breaking their stereotypes. Cox may take his novelizing more seriously than most disaster-surfeited readers will allow, but there's no denying the sheer craftiness of the telling. A natural for Crashing Plaster-International or Gulp-Western.