Roderick Thorp (1936–1999)

I’m obviously not a fan of action books but I am obviously a fan of Die Hard so here I am. Action on the page is just beyond me. It’s like some ineffable problem in geometry or topology – a long series of physical translations – this person goes here and does that with his elbow, this person ducks under the other person and rolls through a door, the first person fires off a dozen rounds so now he only has ten more rounds “in the clip” (it doesn’t help that I’m ignorant of show more firearms generally), this person is looking over here the other person’s looking at the back of the first person’s head and on and on it goes.

My personal action-dyslexia aside, this is worth reading if, like me, you consider McTiernan’s celluloid version a complete and total unimpeachable masterpiece. Grizzled ex-cop/P.I./ex-fighter pilot/security consultant Joe Leland is our hero, and he’s much bloodthirstier than his screen version, lovable lummox John McLane. Instead of the generally benign Nakatomi corporation the book is set in the HQ of Klaxon Oil, a nefarious multinational recently in bed with Pinochet’s junta to the tune of a hundred and fifty mill. And the leader of the terrorists is not the great Hans, but “Little Tony” Gruber, a smooth-chinned scion of the Baader Meinhoff whose motives are arguably, and confusingly for fans of the film’s morally unambiguous setup, not ignoble (he wants to rub the Americans’ noses in their dirty money). He is an annoying little prick though so there’s no danger of your sympathies being misdirected.

Purely a personal rating. This is probably a solid action novel, if your brain is wired for that. I’m glad I read it but gladder still it’s over. show less

It was quite a discovery to find Die Hard was based on a book, although one with muted excitement given how it’s not well known and book-film relationships are historically uneven. Does it live up to the cleverness of the film? Are the characters the same flippant, wise cracking personalities we have grown up with? Does it even follow the same basic premise? The answer to all these is… sort of.

Nothing Lives Forever is mostly a pretty decent thriller standing on its own terms. Joe Leland show more is our protagonist (cast suitably as Frank Sinatra in the adaptation of the previous book, The Detective), a retired police consultant with military and special forces experience and takes the place of the younger John McClane. Age, experience and back story differences aside, they both share an indefatigable doggedness in the face of adversity and that is what elevates the core of the story. The only other character that is familiar is Gruber himself, although it’s clear that quite a few of the characters survive in some comparable way to the film - even down to the cop on the radio he chats to between the action scenes.

The story itself is recognisable even if the details are different. And a lot of the beloved action scenes can be seen given birth here in some form: the ventilation crawling (which is more claustrophobic here); the bare foot on glass; the “now I have a machine gun”; the elevator explosion; Klaus and his brother (who also dies from a broken neck); the cocky negotiator; swinging through a window on a hosepipe - they’re all here. And it’s these “Die Hard” moments which are where the book shines and gripped me to the point I couldn't stop reading throughout the night. And it’s all accompanied by the narration of Leland’s intelligent tactical thinking as he tries to outthink his equally smart adversaries.

There are some issues with the story though. Sometimes things unfold two steps ahead of the details and as the reader I felt too far behind what Leland was planning. The early third of the book is also a struggle to get through, focusing on Leland's backstory, moralising and social commentary. The reward for getting through the early sections are that when the dirty work starts, it made Leland seem more human, countering his blunt brutality when he became pushed to his limits and turning it into the story of the ageing hero forced to fight one last time. Whilst some of his kills were shocking, I found myself wincing at his pain, laughing at his banter and willing for him to win the day. And fundamentally it feels like the spirit of John McClane was born here, even if McClane is more the “down on your luck” good guy versus Leland who is the well trained, but brutally cold killing tactician.

It’s not a perfect thriller. It’s messily written at times, the social commentary contrasts with other more jarring reminders of the time and Leland’s constant running between floors will become repetitive for some readers, but it shines when it hits its stride throughout the second half of the book when the action comes thick and fast and the author shows their great skill in holding tension across a chapter. It’s also very effective in driving the story of an ageing hero (a favourite trope of mine). And it does have a twist which I wont spoil here.
Its biggest problem these days is that Die Hard as a film does everything better and has the more sympathetic hero, but as a book in its own right this was still a fun read and it deserves a more recognised place in the genre beyond just being the blueprint for one of the greatest (Christmas) films of all time show less

First, I have to say that Die Hard is one of my favourite movies. Second, I hate to admit it but I didn't know it was based on a book. Not that 'based on a book' necessarily means much - most of the time it just means the movie producers passed it on the street with a wink and a wag of the fingers and iiked the picture on the cover. Still, when I got the chance to read Nothing Lasts Forever, from Netgalley, how could I turn it down?

Not surprising, there are several differences between the show more book and the movie: first, the original character is an older ex-cop named Joe Leland and the head of the terrorists is younger than the Rickman character and is named Tony, not Hans Gruber; second, Joe is in San Francisco to meet his daughter and grandkids, not his wife, and the daughter is much less the innocent - in fact, Joe spends much of his time thinking about where she has gone wrong. The book also lacks the witty repartee between the two main characters which made Die Hard so much fun to watch. But most of these are really minor changes meant to appeal, I suspect, to a broader audience.

What is surprising is how much of the action in the movie was taken from the book. If anything, it is more intense...and chilling, in the novel. Interestingly, many of the young terrorists are women, something left from the movies, perhaps because Joe seems to act more cold bloodedly than the movie character. At times, even Joe, himself, questions his own actions and this is no more true than when he describes the youth and conviction he sees on the faces of these women right before he kills them.

Which brings us to another important difference between the book and the movie: we, the reader, are privy to Joe's inner thoughts making him a much more complex character than in the movie. His motives are not always clear and some of his actions seem incongruous. Joe is much less one-dimensional than the John McClane of the movies, more nuanced, more noir than cowboy. If the book lacks the humour of the movie, it is, overall, a much deeper and, therefore, more interesting story. show less

The movie Die Hard was very loosely based on this. The novel is much darker than the movie. The novel manages to be both didactic and cynically amoral; there are no good guys in it. The Marxist terrorists are just Marxist terrorists; they’re not glamorized at all. But at the same time, the corporation whose building they take over is also portrayed as a bad guy, looting the third world and engaging in arms dealing to fascists, etc. It’s weird. There’s a hint of “capitalists are evil show more and corrupt and deserve everything bad that happens to them,” but it is also made plain that the Marxists are nothing but killers who enjoy killing, and that when people like them obtain power, the next thing that happens is massacres and genocide. This is stated explicitly. Therefore, Thorp really does not seem to be taking anyone’s side. Also, instead of the cop’s ex-wife in the building, it’s his daughter, and she dies at the end, plunging to her death along with the head of the terrorist gang. Gah, why? Is there a message there? Or is it just a tragedy? It’s hard to tell what Thorp intended.

I think Hollywood made the right call when they transferred this to the screen. They removed the cynicism and political aspects (is nihilism political?) and turned it into a battle against a group of common thieves. In other words, they turned it into a good action movie.

Pacing and structure: The beginning is horribly slow. Nothing interesting happens until page 40, which is when our hero first hears screams from elsewhere in the building. Before that, it’s just a bunch of largely purposeless ruminations about his professional and personal past. It tells us the hero is familiar with anti-terrorism methods, but that could have been handled in less than a page. PAAAADDING! I admit it; skipped ahead. The Los Angeles Times called the novel, “A ferocious, bloody, raging book so single-mindedly brilliant in concept and execution it should be read at a single sitting.” Well... once it gets going, sure. In fact, I did read it in one day. But the beginning suggests that the first draft wasn’t long enough and Thorp had to pad it out.

I'm not sure who the target audience for this novel would be now. Even if you like the movie, that's not a good reason to read the novel because the movie is significantly better. I think perhaps the best candidate for this is an aspiring Tinseltown screenwriter who would like an example of how to take literary source material and turn it into a movie. Unlike many other cases that come to mind (cough, The Hobbit cough), Hollywood's choices in conversion here were spot-on. show less