Air Force One: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: This author's best work to date.
Review: If you enjoyed other great books by Collins and havent tried this well written book. Do yourself a favor and grab a copy. I read it before I saw the movie. A greay story from beginning to end.

Rating:
Summary: Very interesting and filled with suspense
Review: Read the book, it was great, saw the movie and it was good, but nothing compared to the book.... In the book, Terrorists seize Air Force One with the president, the first lady, their thirteen-year-old daughter, and more than fifty staff members.

The terrorists threaten to execute a hostage every thirty minutes if their demands are not met. Washington has a NO HOSTAGE policy and they refuse to give in to the terrorists demands. The suspense escalates from there... The president is left to protect his family with the help of some of his staff.

This is great reading material. I read it while on a nine hour flight, so that made it more intense...

Rating:
Summary: One of the best novelizations I've read
Review: Sometimes I wonder why Max Allan Collins doesn't write the scripts of the films he novelizes. His entries in the genre, including In the Line of Fire and Dick Tracy,often have better dialogue and more fleshed out characters than the films themselves (though in the character department, you couldn't really improve on In the Line of Fire). His novel Air Force One is the book the movie should have been based on. I really enjoyed the film, but, having read this fine book, I think I would have believed the film more if it was, I don't know, more like the novel! As you read the book, you'll discover there are scenes and dialogue you wish were in the film (the sequence where President James Marshall drinks a beer before takeoff becomes a funny discourse with his aides over the political mileage the President could get from drinking Russian beer as opposed to Heineken), and best of all, the characters and there motivations are a good deal more believable, somehow, on the printed page than on the silver screen, maybe because a writer can just write things as exposition that a screenwriter can't put effectively into dialogue. I've always enjoyed Mr. Collins' work, especially his series of historical mysteries about private eye Nathan Heller, and this is a great addition to his body of work. Most of the people I know would think themselves above movie novelizations, but this one is a terrific book anybody'd be glad to have read. I know I was.