Customer Reviews

The Fan Club

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Imagine you are obsessed with someone like Angelina Jolie. You know everything about her. You think she is humble and nice and tired of living the Hollywood life. Better yet, you think she would fall for someone like you. So, after talking to 3 other guys who would love the chance to get to know the famous actress in an "intimate way", you kidnap her.

That's what happens in The Fan Club, by Irving Wallace. Four guys kidnap a famous movie star named Sharon Fields. The men delude themselves into thinking that once Sharon Fields realizes how "nice" they are, she will willingly submit to their wishes. However, she refuses to even talk to them and that's when things go wrong.

Wallace gives the four obvious reasons to be demented and dissatisfied with there marriages and love lifes. He even portrays the characters in a way that would justify some sort of sexual deviency. But nothing can justify what these men do. Yet that doesn't mean this isn't an enjoyable novel. Adam Malone is obsessed with Sharon Fields. He knows everything about her and thinks she will fall for him if only she got a chance to know him. Kile Shivley, recently home from Viet Nam, is a crude man with no scruples and no respect for women. He doesn't car that their plan involves kidnapping and possible rape. Both of these guys are beleivable. Brunner and Yost are an accountant and insurance salesman. Both are middle-aged men stuck in loveless marriages who jump at the opportunity to meet someone famous like Sharon Fields. The other two seem like normal men who would love to have a chance at someone like Sharon Fields.

The novel opens with 2 members of the fan club about to snatch Sharon Fields from her home. Then the next 150 pages are a flashback into how the kidnapping plan is born and justified. If this novel had been written today, most of the beginning would have been cut because it moves too slow. Still, some of it is interesting as we see these characters slowly justify that what they are doing isn't really bad.

The sex scenes in this book are brutal and crude, probably appropriate for being written in the midst of the sexual revolution in the 70s. Wallace does a good job of writing Sharon Fields. He shows the devastation she feels at being kidnapped and raped, and then the transformation she undergoes and she tries to accept her predicament and then get out of it.

The ending fast paced and supsenseful. Will Sharon survive? Will her captors? Will the police arrive in time. This book is a good thriller in spite of the 1st 150 pages of boring exposition and the crude sex scenes. Definitely a book to check out.

This is the story of 4 "ordinary" men who become obsessed with a goddess movie star and plan a crime involving her abduction and more.

Together they came up with the plan as a joke. They created what they deemed as "The Fan Club". They decide at first if they abduct the sexually explicit movie star, that they will all act out a sexual fantasy. They make themselves believe that she will find it erotic and be a part of the whole thing. However their fantasy turns into horrifying an sadistic reality of bondage, savagery and finally murder.

A young man hopelessly smitten with a famous movie star organizes a private club to "befriend" the starlet and sample her physical attributes in a secluded mountain hideway. Although the book has its moments, the absurd premise overshadows what suspense and intrigue Irving Wallace intended for his readers. The kidnapping of Sharon Fields and subsequent mistreatment of her is dismissed by her captors as hero worship and it is hard to understand how these men could be so gullible as to dismiss the consequences of their behavior as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be intimate with a sex symbol. Wallace has written many excellent books such as "The Man", "The Word", "The Prize" and others, but the plot here is a hard sell. None of the four characters, save Ms. Fields, generate any sympathy and the novel settles in to a game of cat-and-mouse as the woman plots to outsmart and manipulate the men in order to gain her freedom. The endgame has an explosive finish which Wallace draws out dramatically but this book doesn't compare with the author's best novels.

I very much enjoyed this book when I read it. I was just about 21 when it came out. It truly was suspenseful and erotic. I thought they made a movie about it, does anyone know if they did? Thanks

i read this book in 1978 and lost the copy to a friend. i've been trying to locate one ever since but with no success. i hope the publishers will reprint this great book.

I GOT THE HARBACK EDITION WITH THE FRONT PAPER. lUCKY ME! CONTACT ME AT USA6SODOM@YAHOO.COM,IF YOU WANT IT!