MARATHON MAN

by William Goldman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1974

There's just no telling what the deluxe scenarist of Sundance Kids and Princess Brides will write next -- this time it's an immobilizing thriller with several startling sequences for openers (a New York car crash inadvertently involving two old men; a hit in a latrine -- with only the wig of the dead man as a souvenir) which seems to be unrelated until you get well on into this brutal world of couriers and assassins, knives and Magnum force guns, people who buy and sell, Providers. . . . And the Marathon Man who is nothing more than a naive and ""much too trusting"" Rhodes Scholar now at Columbia, Thomas Babington Levy, who thinks he might break a record -- Nurmi's. Until he's right in the middle of a deadlier competition he knew nothing about: his father's suicide back in the McCarthy era; his beautiful new girl's improbable susceptibility to him; the warning visit of his older brother -- the man he knew as Doc and others knew as the killer, Scylla -- just before he drops dead before his eyes; his own torture and pursuit and final win in a bloody battue. All of it streaks with sudden death right behind the reader who will have already turned the next page, and it should run rings around any other book of this kind to appear this season.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1974

ISBN: 0345439724

Page Count: -

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION