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. ( )

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. ( )

disappointing...not much character development or plot...slow plodding book....its like a different author from silence of the lambs/red dragon

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. ( )

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. ( )