A Wild Ride

I’d heard of William Goldman’s Marathon Man before picking up a copy, but I really had no idea what it was about — only that Dustin Hoffman starred in the movie adaption. I think I was picturing something along the lines of Stephen King’s Running Man — like some dude who can’t stop running to save his life.

“I don’t know that you’ll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella’s gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don’t learn the mistakes of the past, you’ll be doomed to repeat them.”

Instead, it’s more of a political/spy thriller, centered around a graduate student who runs, hence the name of the novel. He starts the book working on his studies, and running around the reservoir. He gets tangled up with this conspiracy involving Holocaust diamonds, hidden by Nazis in New York City. It’s best not to go into too much detail — like Magic, it’s one of those books where something is revealed about 1/3 of the way in that shakes up everything you knew up to that point. But I would definitely recommend it — it’s very thrilling and quite difficult to put down once you get started. The main character — Thomas Babington “Babe” Levy — is no movie star hero (casting Dustin Hoffman in the part works perfectly) but he has some inner toughness that he manages to draw on by the end of the story.