Day of Reckoning [Hardcover]

John Katzenbach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1989

Megan and Duncan Richards have come a long way from 1968 and their radical past. He's a banker; she's in real estate. They have two teenage daughters and a young son. But the past has not forgotten them. From her prison cell, the beautiful and cold-blooded terrorist Tanya, with whom the Richards were involved in 1968, plots her revenge on the couple she blames for her capture. Soon she will be released from jail. Then she will start to pay them back -- beginning with their son . . .

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Megan and Duncan Richards have it all: beautiful kids, a lovely home, respectable jobs in banking and real estate, stock portfolios, and a .45 pistol dating back to 1968. They don't talk about the .45, because back then they were members of the Students for a Democratic Society splinter group the Phoenix Brigade. Their charismatic, manipulative leader, Olivia, bullied and shamed them into driving the getaway cars in a bank robbery to raise cash for the revolution. Olivia--then known as Tanya--made the bank job sound completely foolproof, inevitable, like the withering away of the state in a Marxist fantasy.

But cops and robbers died in the bungled heist (grippingly described by Katzenbach, a former SDS kid and distinguished crime reporter turned novelist), and Megan and Duncan fled the scene. Olivia emerges from 18 years in jail and hooks up with a Phoenix Brigade pal who's been an underground refugee. Age has failed to mellow her: they kidnap the Richards' son and Duncan's dad--a judge-and Olivia has had time to dream up a much meaner, cleverer plan to raise cash and wreak vengeance. She never squealed on the couple, enabling her to blackmail them--they're still accomplices to murder, so they can't call the cops on her. Will Duncan pull off a truly sophisticated bank job to save his kids? Can Olivia keep her unstable gang in line? Can realtor Megan find Olivia's hideout? As events rampage along, Katzenbach puts us inside each character's head, drawing closed the net of terror. This is a stay-up-all-night thriller. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

This is the third thriller by Katzenbach, praised for his In the Heat of the Summer and The Traveler , as well as a true-crime story, First Born . Harking back to 1968, the author describes an attempted bank robbery in California that costs the lives of five people and sends the gang leader, Olivia Barrow ("Tanya") to prison. Two of her team, Megan and Duncan Richards, get clean away, however, and settle down in New England to live as "establishment" parents with their three children. When Tanya's sentence is completed 18 years later, she and two armed men arrive in the Richardses' town and kidnap their son Tommy and his grandfather. Cursing Megan and Duncan for deserting their comrades, Tanya reminds them that they will be charged in a capital crime if they appeal to the police. Instead, the parents and their teenaged daughters take the offensive; horror results. The novel serves as a cautionary tale, obviously based on the real SLA/Hearst case. But readers may wish for characters to care about, rather than symbols of mills grinding slowly and exceeding fine.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Bdd Promotional Book Co; second edition (June 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0792481364
• ISBN-13: 978-0792481362
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,557,160 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Forget the other reviwer!, March 16, 2005

By 

Mad Reveller "[e-mail]" (Delaware, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Day Of Reckoning (Hardcover)

In short, this novel is as well written and conceived and constructed as any other commericial suspense novel of note. Sure, you can pick this book apart if you over analyze it; but again, the same holds true of most other novels. Hell, I can even find flaws in The Silence of the Lambs. The other reviewer should lighten up. John Katzenbach is a wonderful novelist. I hightly reccomend this one, as well as Just Cause, In the Heat of the Summer, and State of Mind. I have not yet read The Traveller, but it's next on my list. And then The Analyst and the Madman's Tale.

10 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A story leaking like sinking boat, June 10, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Day of Reckoning (Mass Market Paperback)

Well, J.K. did it again. This one is quite beyond my recongnition! I've never read a book with so many leaking flaws. I just couldn't believe 1) how the writer made up a story with so poorly make-believed scenario? 2) How the author's editors would not find it impulsively to point out those unbelievable plots and scenes in this book? Were they blind,or just too lazy or scared to do so? Did J.K. taking any banking reserch before he wrote this book? Did he really believe a teenaged girl who has never touched a gun in her life, could shoot like a swatteam sharp shooter? Give me certain credit as a mature reader, OK? I have to get into a lifeboat before reading your novels again if I didn't find you were still salvageable in your JUST CAUSE