Customer Reviews

Fifth Horseman (Charnwood Library)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I read the book a few months ago and it's deeply sad to find out how it foretold the future. A future in which danger lies not in ballistic attacks but terrorism.
Simply told, almost 20 years ago the writers imagined the background and the dynamics that could lead to a disaster really similar to what happened yesterday.
My simpathy to all USA people for the great disaster that stroke their country.

I paid 25 cents for this book and it was the best quarter I ever spent. This book grabs you at the beginning and does notlet go of you to well after you are done reading it. The subject matter is so topical that the 22 years from original press does not matter at all. Buy it used, find in in the library, or if you have money to burn buy it from a Zshop. You won't be disappointed.

This is a prototype Tom Clancy book before there were Tom Clancy books.

I had bought The Fifth Horseman at an airport before a business trip. I read it on the flight for half an hour or so. Then it disappeared into the piles of non-essential materials.

Four months later, the book resurfaced. (Obviously, the first few chapters hadn't made much of an impression.) It was a morning in June about ten o'clock, outdoors on a hammock, when I started the book once more. It was in my den, after midnight, when I finally read the last page of the book.

What a story! A cliff hanger. Tremendous suspense. Extremely plausible. So good that I didn't read another novel for months because nothing else could compete with the experience The Fifth Horseman had provided. It was simply THAT good.

Amazon.com says this book is now out-of-print. Don't let that stop you. Buy it at auction. Find it at your library. Listen to it on audiotape. If you like books of international intrigue, this is the definitive suspense story.

I first read this book almost 15 years ago. It is practically bleeding with researched technical facts to enhance the plot, which is also captivating. Two main characters, Whalid and the President, seem to change their outlook later in the book.

It is a must read, especially now. A TLC broadcast from 1997, Doomsday: On The Brink, shows that as decades pass, such an incident might be inevitable. In the last 30,000 years, every other weapon the human race has invented has proliferated and been used. Decades? Centuries? Millenia? When the people who remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki have passed? Who might be tempted to push the button then? Not just political or military leaders, but terrorists?

A terrifying must read.

Definitely this book deserves SIX stars, it will keep you reading from the first page till the last one, involves all the presidents of the world and even with that is an easy book to read, but here are my questions:

Why could this happened 25 years ago and not right now? I think that this book is timeless.
What does the president will really do?
What does the Police, FBI and CIA among others will really do? They really know how to handle this kind of problem?
All the countries will respect the president's decision?

Read this book and think about these questions.

Readers of Frederick Forsyth, Jack Higgins and Tom Clancy must get their hands on this brilliantly written thriller of a potential nuclear catastrophe in NY city. This book seems especially plausible today and adds to the impression. The characters are believable and the plot unfolds superbly, no let-ups or loose strings! A must read for all thriller readers, you will not be disapppointed. I read this book at a stretch and it is at the top of my all-time favorites list (and I've read quite a few thrillers!)

a terrible but ever more realitic threat to american national security is represented by nuclear extortion emanating from the third world.in this finely crafted novel the authors depict such a harrowing scenario.it is played out to perfection with deft insight into the geopolitical conditions that could create such afrightening event;

This was a book that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
The ultimate villain Mommar Quadaffi is able to hide a nuclear
bomb in New York City.He also has a team of terrorists who are
loose in New York.He is then able to use the bomb as a means of leverage against the President of the United States.In the mean-
time the FBI,CIA, and the New York Police Department are searching high and low to locate the bomb.The clcok starts to
click down on the time left to find the bomb.The President and
the law enforcement agencies are under the gun.Quadaffi plays the
role of the villain very skillfully.This is a very scary book
that is indeed a page turner. Read it.

First time I read this book was 15 years ago. Great fiction, seems surreal at times due to the current geopolitical tensions.

The prospect of an event is everyone's worst nightmare. Yet it is precisely what the think tanks responsible for national security have on their agenda, and have for years...what to do...if. The prospect was so daunting that the US and USSR for decades pulled out all the stops to insure that a nuclear explosion would never be initiated at the expense of either side, yet ironically devised every diabolical delivery vehicle, intellectual platform and system capable of destroying NY or MOSCOW in a NY minute. Now it is horribly realistic, save the inability to acquire and successfully detonate one (but would need several to probably assure that a success would be achieved, notwithstanding discovery of one or more attempts)Fanaticism is unpredictible. Can you match unpredictibility with effective unpredictibility? An extraordinary look into a fictional story which we should hope never strays from that genre.