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Rating: 
Summary: a one eye first view.
Review: Being a John Carpenter fan it was a treat to be able to read the book after witnessing his vision of '97 years after he had written it. I have this book and love to read it now and then, along with watching the movie..both versions are still one of visual enticement and thrills. Excuse me while I flip a page.....
Rating: 
Summary: A novelization that becomes a novel,
Review: I agree with the other reviewer, McQuay took Carpenter and Castle's witty script and fashioned a first rate piece of noir sodden science fantasy. Snake Plissken is captured shortly after a botched bank robbery and, when the President of the United States becomes a prisoner in the Mahattan Island Prison, offered a pardon to go on a rescue mission. Working from an expanded script, McQuay fleshes out Carpenter and Castle's concepts, making the characters and their situations more complex and realistic. Fans of the movie need to have this book as it is every bit as good as, if not better than, the movie itself.
Rating:
Summary: A novelization that becomes a novel,
Review: I agree with the other reviewer, McQuay took Carpenter and Castle's witty script and fashioned a first rate piece of noir sodden science fantasy. Snake Plissken is captured shortly after a botched bank robbery and, when the President of the United States becomes a prisoner in the Mahattan Island Prison, offered a pardon to go on a rescue mission. Working from an expanded script, McQuay fleshes out Carpenter and Castle's concepts, making the characters and their situations more complex and realistic. Fans of the movie need to have this book as it is every bit as good as, if not better than, the movie itself.
Rating:
Summary: Snake Plissken Rules
Review: I read this book when I was 12 yrs old and now, at 34, I'm still loaning it to my friends. i was lucky enough to read the book before I saw the film. Mike McQuay does a fantastic job of fleshing out the nightmarish world that Snake inhabits, from the chemical warfare that has created millions of homicidal maniacs(convieniently separated into 2 groups:prisoners and the United states Police Force) to explaining just what went on at Leningrad to give Snake only one eye and such a bad attitude. This book has the greatest use of similies since Raymond Chandler! " Harold Hellman was as slippery as Vaseline and about as loyal as a seeing eye dog in a hamburger factory."
Great stuff. this book is some kind of weird classic: A "Novelization" that is 100 times better than the film!
Rating:
Summary: An unusual movie tie-in
Review: This is a very unusual book in that it takes a 4-star movie script and fleshes it out into a first-rate science-fiction novel. We understand more about how Snake was arrested (...probably derived from the infamous Fresno bank robbery scene that John Carpenter left on the cutting room floor). Even better, we understand far more about the world Snake lives in. Insanity is rampant (...or it may just be Snake's paranoia, we're never quite sure) and New York is just one vestige of a pervasive police state. We learn more about Hauk, and how he became warden of the New York Penitentiary. This is probably perfunctory on McQuay's part, but the story of a man looking for his insane son plays very well. Hauk's backstory also unobrusively comes up several times in the book, and has a bittersweet ending. We learn more about "The Crazies", who in the film were simply one-dimensional set dressing. McQuay actually did a very credible job, and this book was in print for many years after "Escape from New York" was released in 1981. It's such a shame that it is now unavailable.
Rating:
Summary: An unusual movie tie-in
Review: This is a very unusual book in that it takes a 4-star movie script and fleshes it out into a first-rate science-fiction novel. We understand more about how Snake was arrested (...probably derived from the infamous Fresno bank robbery scene that John Carpenter left on the cutting room floor). Even better, we understand far more about the world Snake lives in. Insanity is rampant (...or it may just be Snake's paranoia, we're never quite sure) and New York is just one vestige of a pervasive police state. We learn more about Hauk, and how he became warden of the New York Penitentiary. This is probably perfunctory on McQuay's part, but the story of a man looking for his insane son plays very well. Hauk's backstory also unobrusively comes up several times in the book, and has a bittersweet ending. We learn more about "The Crazies", who in the film were simply one-dimensional set dressing. McQuay actually did a very credible job, and this book was in print for many years after "Escape from New York" was released in 1981. It's such a shame that it is now unavailable.
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