Rating: 
Summary: a good political thriller
Review: "Black Sunday" is a novel by Thomas Harris written in the 1970s. In it Muslim extreamist terrorists recruit brainwashed ex-Navy pilot (and former Vietnam POW) Michael Lander. Delihia is his contact, who plays on his mental triggers and works as a go between from Lander and her commanders in the PLO. Their plot is to use a zeplin as a huge clamore mine and detonate it at the Super Bowl being played in New Orleans, where the Presindent of the USA is supposed to be attending. This sounds familier, dosn't it. This book pre-dates Tom Clancey's "Sum of All Fears" by almost twelve years. When I first read it, it seemed a little silly; but after September 11th, it wasn't funny anymore. The book is an excellent political thriller; characters seem realistic, especially Lander, he is really nuts and psycho. One person said that he seemed too insane and unfocused to pull something this massive off. That was what Delihia was for. She was his focus. She was also well fleshed out. She isn't evil (well, not exactly); she really believes in what she is doing. I liked it, and if your into Tom Clancy or John le Carre, then you should get something out of it.
Rating:
Summary: a good political thriller
Review: "Black Sunday" is a novel by Thomas Harris written in the 1970s. In it Muslim extreamist terrorists recruit brainwashed ex-Navy pilot (and former Vietnam POW) Michael Lander. Delihia is his contact, who plays on his mental triggers and works as a go between from Lander and her commanders in the PLO. Their plot is to use a zeplin as a huge clamore mine and detonate it at the Super Bowl being played in New Orleans, where the Presindent of the USA is supposed to be attending. This sounds familier, dosn't it. This book pre-dates Tom Clancey's "Sum of All Fears" by almost twelve years. When I first read it, it seemed a little silly; but after September 11th, it wasn't funny anymore. The book is an excellent political thriller; characters seem realistic, especially Lander, he is really nuts and psycho. One person said that he seemed too insane and unfocused to pull something this massive off. That was what Delihia was for. She was his focus. She was also well fleshed out. She isn't evil (well, not exactly); she really believes in what she is doing. I liked it, and if your into Tom Clancy or John le Carre, then you should get something out of it.
Rating:
Summary: Terrorism?
Review: The bad guys act like good guys and the good guys act like bad guys in this morally ambiguous novel from Thomas Harris. The feeling of angst and anger felt by both sides translates into a horrific story with ties to the real world of international politics.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit old-fashioned, but I liked it
Review: All the makings of a good book. If provides us with a splendid insight on how terrorist organisations work, and how an operation takes form. Almost like a top-secret briefing. All of a sudden 9/11 looks a good deal different...
Rating:
Summary: Thomas Harris didn't quite have it down yet.
Review: All three of Thomas Harris' other books, Red Dragon, The Silence Of The Lambs, and Hannibal are masterpieces. Black Sunday was his first book and it's good, but Harris' signature style is not quite intact. It's a good book, interesting, a little slow in parts but nothing unforgivable. The detail is there, the sympathy for all characters is there, it's just, missing somthing. The polish his other books have I suppose. Thomas Harris is one of the great writers of our time, Black Sunday is well worth reading, both for entertainment, and for an interesting study on the evolution of an artist.
Rating: 
Summary: Black Sunday
Review: BDD audio has unearthed Hannibal's author Thomas Harris's archaic back listed novel, Black Sunday. This dated narrative of terrorists at the Superbowl is an insubstantial audio project at best. Veteran audio narrator Ron McLarty aims very hard to bring this audio to life. The abridgement of this text is the downfall of this audio book.
Rating: 
Summary: Palestinian terrorists + vindictive Viet vet = deadly plot
Review: Before Thomas Harris, a respected reporter for the Associated Press and ace novelist, created the creepy-yet-charismatic serial killer Hannibal Lecter in his novels Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, he had already dabbled in another and even more frightening topic: a massive terrorist attack against a "soft" (undefended, usually civilian) target in his 1975 debut novel, Black Sunday.
Like The Sum of All Fears, a Tom Clancy "Jack Ryan Novel" that was clearly inspired by Harris' tautly written thriller, Black Sunday's plot focuses on a plan by Palestinian terrorists to commit a deadly and spectacular attack on a highly televised event: the Super Bowl.
The reason for the attack -- at least from the Palestinian side -- is a common thread that runs through both novels: America's unswerving support for Israel in the apparently never-ending Middle East conflict.
And just as Clancy --possibly taking his cues from this novel -- would later do in Sum, Harris not only has a dedicated group of terrorists to carry out this diabolical plan, he has a psychotic American co-conspirator on board, a man whose recent life has pushed him over the edge from understandable resentment to psychotic lust for revenge against his own country.
There, however, the similarities end, for whereas Clancy's obviously insane Marvin Russell was a murderous Native American of the Lakota tribe and was considered both untrustworthy and expendable by his Arab "allies" and was used as a mere conduit into the Denver area until the homemade nuclear bomb was in place in that Colorado city, Black Sunday's Michael Lander is a willing planner and executioner of Black September's spectacular plot to turn a blimp into a makeshift weapon of mass destruction. A Navy veteran with experience on both dirigibles and helicopters, Lander was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and spent six hellish years as a POW until the Paris Agreement ended American military involvement in Indochina and Hanoi released all the American prisoners.
For Lander, it is his Vietnam experience that is the catalyst for his willing embrace of the Black September terrorists. Ostracized by his fellow POWs for collaborating with the North Vietnamese and discovering that his wife has had an affair, Lander is pushed to the brink of madness by the hostility his fellow POWs -- especially the senior officer -- feel toward him. Unable to cope with his humiliation and anger, Michael Lander resigns his commission and goes job hunting, finding the going tough until, finally, he is hired by the Aldrich rubber company to fly blimps.
By now, however, Lander is plotting a most lethal sort of revenge upon the country he believes caused him to lose his pride, his honor, six years of his life, his manhood, and his wife. Inspired by the Black September attack on the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, he contacts the radical terrorist group, asking for explosives and technical assistance so he can convert the Aldrich blimp into a flying Claymore mine. The target: the Super Bowl championship game. The place: the new Superdome stadium in New Orleans.
Intrigued, the Palestinians send one of their deadliest -- and most beautiful -- operatives, Dahlia Iyad. She spends a year in the United States, cultivating, evaluating, and becoming intimate with Lander, a man she knows to be increasingly insane yet incredibly useful to Black September's goal of making America pay for her support of Palestine's hated enemy, Israel.
Harris takes the reader along on a transatlantic race against the clock as the terrorists make their detailed plans and get ever closer to accomplishing their deadly mission, while Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service), the CIA, and the FBI hunt the terrorists down after finding clues that point to an impending attack on American soil. Leading the hunt is Major David Kabakov, whose ruthless efficiency at chasing and killing Palestinian terrorists has earned him the dark-humored nickname of "the final solution." And as Harris interweaves the storylines of the hunter and hunted, the reader is enticed to keep reading to find out who will preservere....and who will die.
Harris masterfully flashes backward and forward through time, driving the terrorist plot forward step by step and describing the American-Israeli collaborative effort to find Dahlia and her comrades before they can carry out their plan in minute detail, all the while examining Lander's long spiral into murderous madness. The pace is fast and furious, giving the reader an excellent example of a well-crafted suspense novel that not only never loses focus or goes into unnecessary tangents, but is also grounded in the reality of the mid-1970s. It discusses such real-life events as the Munich Massacre, the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, and the beginning of the spread of global terrorism. Black September, the Palestinian sponsors of Lander's plan, really existed, and so did most of the agencies and entities depicted in the novel, with Aldrich Rubber being a fictional stand-in for Goodyear.
Black Sunday not only marked the debut of a master of the suspense genre, but it was also made into a moderately successful motion picture which co-starred Bruce Dern and Robert Shaw.
Rating:
Summary: NOT BAD FOR A FIRST TRY
Review: Definitely not Harris' best...I had no empathy for any of the characters besides oddly, the antagonist. Looking forward to "Red Dragon" from the elusive Mr. Harris.
Rating:
Summary: Overlooked
Review: Everybody has read Silence Of The Lambs,most have read Red Dragon, but no-one seems to have given Harris' first effort much time! This is a great story and idea well executed. All the characters are nicely developed to the point of predictability. The only reason that their actions are predictable are because they are so well introduced and we know who they are and what they are likely to do. My views on this read are that if it's good enough for the great man Clancy to emulate it's good enough for the average mortal to read.
Rating:
Summary: Peasant read but below the level of Hannibal Lecter series
Review: First book of Thomas Harris is a story about a group of terrorists planning a massive massacre on a stadium when Super Bowl final is going to be played. Most of the book revolves about planning, preparation and carrying out the terroristic act. There are some moments that seem not very realistic but as a whole the story on terrorists' side is far from fiction. However on the other side (that of the good guys) things sometimes go too exaggerative when opposed to reality. The plot, retaled in brief will make most of you reply: "Typical thriller book". We've got a man and a woman planning a terroristic act in USA that is sponsored and approved by PLO. We've got a special agent from Israel doing his best with the help of FBI to prevent this attempt to happen. And we've got a lot of corpses left behind as we proceed through the book. However Thomas Harris does a good job in developing the characters but as I was reading I couldn't deny to myself that Stephen King beats Thomas Harris when it comes to characters development. I personally think that terrorsts are built up better than the 'people of the law'. An interesting line through the story is the relationship between terrorists Lander and Dahlia - it is far from a love story (even has nothing to do with a love story). Terrorists appealed to me more than those trying to catch them, no doubt this is due to Harris' way of representing them. Politics are very well covered in the book and it is no doubt that this book really turns out to be prophetic in the light of recent history events. The final chapter of the book is very dynamic and once started you could be sure that you'll not be willing to drop down the book until it is finished. As a conclusion I could say that this book didn't left me with feeling that I've read something really good, but it is a book that is a pleasure to read while spending some time relaxing. Next three books of Harris, starring Hannibal Lecter, are much more better than his first attempt in writing.
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