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Black Sunday
Unavailable
Black Sunday
Unavailable
Black Sunday
Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

Black Sunday

Written by Thomas Harris

Narrated by Ron McLarty

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

()

Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

When the game begins in New Orleans this Super Bowl Sunday . . . 80,000 people had better get ready to die.

The Super Bowl--where thousands have gathered for an all-American tradition. Suddenly it's the most terrifying place on earth . . .

Michael Lander is the most dangerous man in America. He pilots a television blimp over packed football stadiums every weekend. He is fascinated with explosives. And he happens to be very, very crazy. That's why a beautiful PLO operative has seduced him. That's why--on Super Bowl Sunday--the world will witness the bloody assassination of the U. S. president and the worst mass murder in history. Unless someone discovers what Michael Lander plans . . . and can kill him first.


From the Paperback edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 5, 2000
ISBN9780553751048
Unavailable
Black Sunday
Author

Thomas Harris

Thomas Harris is the author of best-selling novels including The Silence of the Lambs, Black Sunday, Red Dragon, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising.

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Reviews for Black Sunday

Rating: 3.3542418819188193 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

271 ratings17 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Black Sunday, Thomas Harris’s first novel (and his only one not about Hannibal Lecter) tells the story of terrorists attempting to detonate a bomb from a blimp at the Super Bowl and the Mossad and FBI agents working to find them and prevent the attack. The 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis, in which Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage, inspired Harris to write the story and he references that act several times throughout. The story alternates between the terrorists – blimp pilot Michael Lander, who seeks revenge against the U.S. after torture as a POW in Vietnam, and Dahlia Iyad from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September – and those who want to stop them – David Kabakov of Mossad and Sam Corley of the FBI – as the former group acquires all of their tools and the latter tries to uncover clues about the terrorists’ plans. Harris also uses flashbacks to fill in characters’ backstories when it becomes necessary to understand parts of the plot. The tension slowly builds over the course of the novel culminating in an adrenalin-filled conclusion.Tom Clancy’s 1988 novel, The Sum of All Fears, bears some similarities to this 1975 work, with the role of the Israeli Defense Force, a group of Palestinian terrorists attempting to detonate a bomb during the Super Bowl, and conflict between intelligence agencies. That said, Harris’s novel is a much more streamlined thriller that focuses on politics only as they are relevant to characters’ motivations, while Clancy’s later book is grounded more in the politics of his Jack Ryan series. Fans of these type of thriller novels will find enough difference to enjoy them independently, as each author’s unique voice makes the story their own.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A dated but well written 1970s style terrorism thriller.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wish this guy was still writing!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Harris on good form, not believable but keeps the attention through to the conclusion; we knew all along that the rotters wouldn't pull it off!
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The two books that librarything keeps pushing for me are Memoirs of a Geisha and Hannibal. I decided to go with serial killers first. I am compulsive about reading from the beginning so checked out the author's first book. It was enjoyable, and now am on to his second book, Red Dragon.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A perfectly decent thriller with a rather improbable storyline about a terrorist attack in the US, involving a large building, an aircraft and a bunch of Arabs.The writing's pulled back emotionally, almost report-like, though not without humour. I rooted for the baddies all the way through.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A dated but well written 1970s style terrorism thriller.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    What a disappointment! I thought for sure the author/creator of Hannibal Lector would be a little more interesting. The premise is fantastic -- too bad the execution suffers. The characters are almost caricatures except for Rabakov. The possibilities for suspense are wonderful but he doesn't quite pull it off.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The basic plot is fascinating. Can an ex-POW mastermine the total destruction of a stadium during the Super Bowl by using a bomb strapped to the bottom of a blimp? Harris tries to go into the psychological developments that would turn a person into a sucide bomber. This book was first published in 1975 but after the events of September 11, 2001, this book has new and eerie significance.Nonetheless, I can't give this book a 10 because the story quickly becomes mired in backstories and character developments only vaguely related to the central plot. I ended up resorting to skipping chapters that didn't directly deal with the main consipirators. If the story had been edited down by about a third, I would have rated it a 10.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting thriller. A little predictable. But still good.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The first book I have read by this author, and it is a terrific thriller. The main character's background is shown in depth, and all the detail really works. I hadn't been too excited about getting into his Hannibal Lecter books, but since this one is so good, and since I am a fan of "Dexter", I'll be checking out more of his work.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Harris’ first novel is a queerly prescient view of the world even 30 years after it was published. It follows three terrorists – two Palestinian “freedom fighters” and a disgruntled Vietnam vet – as they execute a frightening plan to explode a bomb over the Super Bowl and kill everyone there, including the President. A parallel story line follows the movements of the Israeli Mossad and CIA as they try to track down the terrorists, deduce what they are going to do and stop it.In the ‘70s, this book must have seemed like a fantastic thrill ride. Today, it’s all too realistic. Even in his first novel, Harris’ spare, precise style is evident. The book reads more like a screenplay than a novel, and for this type of story, that’s just what’s needed to keep the suspense honed.This was my second reading of this novel, and while I found it just as enjoyable and suspenseful as the first time around – I didn’t remember what happened in the end – I wasn’t quite as engaged in the story, perhaps because it had become so much easier to imagine something like this actually happening.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An okay first novel. His writing got better with the advent of the character, Hannibal Lector.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Some brilliant ideas, almost twenty-five years in advance of 9/11. Harris has a brilliant sense of human pathology, but he's not an especially good writer, and the last quarter of the book is very hurried.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is Thomas Harris's first novel, set at the SuperBowl in Miami. Harris only publishes about every five to eight years, the past four being around his character of Hannibal Lecteur. I was working in Miami Beach while they filmed this at the SuperBowl there.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Thomas Harris' first novel, while not quite up to the level of some of his later ones (excluding the godawful Hannibal Rising), is a fine cat-and-mouse thriller with some taut moments. Later adapted as a Frankenheimer movie, it seems to have gotten a little bit of renewed interest post-9/11.