7.6 /10 1 Votes
4.1/5 Barnes & Noble Language English Media type Print (hardback) ISBN 0-399-11443-2 Publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons | 3.6/5 Goodreads Country United States Publication date 1975 Pages 318 Originally published 1975 Page count 318 Adaptations Black Sunday (1977) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Genres Crime Fiction, Thriller, Psychological thriller Similar Thomas Harris books, Terrorism books, Mystery books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Black Sunday is a 1975 novel by Thomas Harris.
Contents
It was the first novel by Harris, and achieved only moderate success until it was sold to Hollywood. The novel is a thriller about a plot by terrorists to commit mass murder during the Super Bowl in New Orleans, and law enforcement efforts to stop them. Harris wrote the novel after watching the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis where Palestinian terrorists took Israeli athletes hostage and murdered them.
To date, the novel is the only one by author Harris not to involve the serial killer Hannibal Lecter. In his introduction to a new printing of the novel in 2007, Harris states that the driven, focused character of terrorist Dahlia Iyad was an inspiration for and precursor to Clarice Starling in his later Lecter novels.
Plot
Michael Lander is a pilot who flies the Aldrich Blimp over NFL football games to film them for network television. He is also, secretly, deranged by years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a bitter court martial on his return and a failed marriage. He longs to commit suicide and to take with him as many as possible of the cheerful, carefree American civilians he sees from his blimp each weekend.
Lander conspires with Dahlia Iyad, an operative from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, to launch a suicide attack using a bomb composed of plastique and a quarter million steel darts, housed on the underside of the gondola of the Aldrich Blimp, which they will detonate over Tulane Stadium during a Super Bowl between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Redskins. Dahlia and Black September, in turn, intend the attack as a wake-up call for the American people, to turn their attention and the world's to the plight of the Palestinians.
American and Israeli intelligence, led by Mossad agent David Kabakov and FBI agent Sam Corley, race to prevent the catastrophe. They piece together the path of the explosives into the country, and Dahlia's own movements.
In a spectacular conclusion, the bomb-carrying blimp is chased by helicopters as it approaches the packed stadium.
Film adaptation
In 1977, a film was made based on the novel starring Robert Shaw and Bruce Dern and directed by John Frankenheimer.