Cheap Black Sunday (Book) (Thomas Harris) Price

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Customer Reviews of Black Sunday

Do not underestimate this!
One has to remember that this is Thomas Harris' first novel. Not everyone can achieve perfection at the first attempt.(You have to wait for Hannibal to gain that!)But this is a real page turner. At first, what seems like a hurried opening sequence actually appears more in line with the rest of the book because of the pace of the plot. The book sets its stool out and charges head first into the reader. Much like the insane main characters. I also happen to think that it is completely wrong to even dare to compare this effort to Harris' later novels. For one thing, this is not intended to be a skin crawling creation like the kind we now associate Harris with. It is simply unfair to compare this with, say, The Silence of the Lambs. They are always going to be very different books.

The plot itself twists and turns, always hinting at the total carnage that has the potential to rise up. The very idea of how to wipe out so many people in one single blow is horrific yet inspired. One feels that only Harris could have come up with such a twisted plot.

This book really is worth a read. It may appear a little dated, and not nearly as refined and polished as Harris' other titles, but give it a chance and you may just surprise yourself.

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Was this the same author?
Well, like many who thought about buying this book, I watched Silence of the Lambs and read Hannibal. Great movie, great book. So, I decided to check this book out. Big mistake.

There's not really anything good about this book. This book is extremely outdated, really slow, and not very fluid.

It's amazing how a couple of decades could improve someone's writing style. Black Sunday, in terms or readability, is not up to par with many of the other books I have read. Normally, I wouldn't comment on this, but at some points it almost gave me a headache. Maybe I was having a bad week, but many sentances were very terse. I'm not an English professor, but let me give you an example. Harris, describing a character seeing a blimp up close for the first time: "It was big. Fasil was reminded of his first view of an aircraft carrier." Why didn't he say something like, "It's size reminded Fasil of the first aircraft carrier he saw."? Maybe I'm some type of picky freak, but when every other sentance is written with extra small words (e.g. of, his, was, an), and there are a lot of passive sentances, it kind of gets on your nerves.

Adding to that is the lack of action and very little dialogue. I was reading about half as many pages per sitting as I usually do because of this. Except for the last twenty pages, the rest of the book could have been condensed into about 50 pages. Except for the details of Lander, the book is full of boring side stories about peripheral characters and annoying little details. I personally never cared about how a helicopter hoists roof parts or how a blimp works, but you'll learn it if you read this.

Finally, this book is sort of outdated. You can't fault Harris for this, but it's worth noting. Though it doesn't really show up in the book (thankfully), the general plot (Middle Eastern terrorists trying to blow something up) sort of prays on the fears of the zenophobic middle American. It's a simple formula which I've seen many times, and has been done many times.

So, if you're looking for another thrilling Hanibal Lector type novel, it would be best to pass on this one.

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Black Sunday
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 5.