Customer Reviews

Man on Fire

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is his first book - and the first featuring Creasy, thequiet, deadly ex-mercenary. Broken down, alcoholic, Creasy is offereda position as a bodyguard for a wealthy Italian industrialist's adolescent daughter.

When the daughter is kidnapped, all hell breaks loose in this novel of redemption and ultimate revenge.

There are no better books in this genre. It is an absolute travesty that any of Quinnell's books are out of print. All of them are fantastic. I spent six months buying out-of-print books to get the entire Creasy collection (plus the non-Creasy titles, which are also very, very well done).

Read the novel years ago while serving in the Legion and recently managed to track down a copy long hidden in a library. Not suprised to see it revived as a movie and the novel re-released in this the age of seeking swift and hard justice from those that commit evil. The book deals with loyalty, redemption and revenge: Creasy, an ex-Para of the Foreign Legion and a veteran of numerous mercenary wars in Africa is unemployed, bitter and devoid of emotion or humanity when he visit an old Legion buddy. His friend gets him a job as a body gaurd to a young girl in kidnapping mad Italy. Over time a warm relationship develops between Creasy and the girl and the old mercenary begins to find his humanity again. Things then get ugly and Creasy goes on a trail of brutal revenge through Italy that makes Tarantino's "Kill Bill" look sedate.
The first movie version of "Man on Fire" (1988)barely did justice to the book and from reviews I've read, neither does the 2004 version.

I think schtinky got it wrong. This book is about Creasy and his
redemtion. Nadia was not taking advantage of Creasy, she loved him. He loved Nadia as well, but he was only able to do so because of Pinta. She enabled him to release and recognize those good feelings which had always been repressed before. Since the plot is about Creasy and the change that he goes through, the part about his stay with Nadia's family is very relevant. Not only is he able to love Nadia, he is also able to fit in with this small community and become an "insider" so to speak.
I liked the book because it gives a lot more background information about Creasy and his friend Guido. It made the whole story more meaningful to me.

Man On Fire is a story about ex-mercenary, Creasy, who is burned out and drinking too much, who has seen too much of the bad side of life and sees nothing more to live for. He visits his old friend Guido in Naples, who convinces him to take a low wage bodyguard job to occupy his time. Becoming a bodyguard to eleven year old Pinta Balletto was at first difficult for Creasy in that he did not care to be around people. But Pinta weaves her way into his cold heart and softens it.

When Pinta is kidnapped and killed, and Creasy badly wounded in her protection, he realizes that Pinta had given him a new outlook on life, and he vows to kill everyone even remotely involved in her death, including taking on Italy's top mob boss, Cantarella.

Unfortunately, here the book takes an emotional sidetrack that the movie thankfully left out. Creasy travels to Gozo to recuperate his strength, staying with the family of Guido's dead wife, Julia. He manages to become accepted in the close knit community, making friends and toning his body.

Here we meet Nadia Schembri, Julia's sister, supposedly written to appear tragic but coming off as pushy and self-centered to me. Unfortunately, she becomes a love interest to Creasy, a very bad sidetrack in the plot. I'm sorry, but a bad first marriage doesn't give her the right to use and deceive someone else. I didn't like her at all.

All the revenge and killing praised about in Man On Fire doesn't even begin until page 257 of a 370 page book. While 256 pages were dedicated to Creasy's meeting with Pinta and recovery after the kidnapping, the book still did not divulge as much information on his character as the 2004 movie did.

Ok, I saw the 2004 movie before I read the book, and since the book is almost *always* better than the movie, my expectations for this book were set pretty high.

The Creasy in the movie is much colder, meaner, and more brutal than the book portrayed, the characters more well rounded (and Nadia completely left out, thank god) and more time is spent on the details of the kidnapping and revenge than the book.

Overall, the book was OK, but not spectacular. There was not as much action as I anticipated, and I found the softer Creasy to be less likeable than the movie's more hardened version. Pinta's part in the book was shallow, and I felt I didn't get to know the girl well enough to love her like Creasy did. If you have seen the movie, take note that the book is very different. If you haven't seen the movie, you may enjoy the book more, but be cautioned that it is not the "non-stop action thriller" that is promised.

Mr Quinnel does it again. As both a former French Foreign Legionnaire and body guard - as is the main character in the book - I can say the Mr Quinnell is right on target with this book. So many novels nowadays disapoint professionals - revolvers with silencers etc etc. - but this one is on the money. I can only wonder if the author wasn't in the Legion at some point and/or a body guard. Do yourself a favor, if you can get hold of a copy, do it and read it...you won't regret it.

It's strange reading a book after watching a movie adaptation. You can't help but give the characters faces, accents, and behaviors that you observed on the big screen.

For A Man on Fire (the book), it is quixotic because the events really occur in Italy, and not Mexico.

Creasy is ex-Marine, ex-Legionnaire, ex-mercenary, and now ex-bodyguard. His first and only bodyguard assignment ends in the grisly death of his young charge.

He takes it personally:

"It was simply revenge. They had killed someone precious to him. He would kill in turn.

`An eye for an eye?' asked Guido quietly.

Creasy shook his head slowly and said with great emphasis, `More than that. More than an eye. Every bloody piece of them'" (p. 148).

Books have the luxury of explaining more than can be done in a 100 minute film. How Creasy gets himself into fighting shape. How he interacts with the world and other people. Guido's relationship with Creasy.

Great book, engaging and exciting. I also note that author "A.J. Quinnell" keeps his/her identity to his/herself. "A.J. Quinnell is the pseudonym of a writer who wishes to remain anonymous because his future books will detail intrigues between nations and cultures and will move freely over international boundaries. He desires the same freedom for himself." I will look for the next installment!

I had already seen this movie when I noticed that in my Dads old book collection I saw "Man On Fire"... I thought that since I liked the movie so much and I was looking for something to read, Id read it. Its much like the movie where the first portion of the book is slow moving, but I found it apropriate to establish plot and character. Its a great book and an even better movie.
Read the book first if you can, then buy the movie.

I was very surprised by how good it was. It's in my top 10 favorite books of all time. Also one of Quinnells best.

Well, any of you who read my reviews know that I tend to give top reviews. that's because I do A LOT of research before I buy ANYTHING! So I tend to be happy with what I buy. Now, this book IS a good book. But, this is one of the few times I can honestly say that I enjoyed the movie more, (the one with Denzel Washington, not Scott Glenn, oof was that one garbage! and I love Scott Glenn as an actor!).

Standing alone, if I had not seen the movie before, I would have rated it higher. Although the technical and some of the tactical aspects of the book are bang-on, (pun intended)!

I do recommend the book, just not that highly.

I've always enjoyed reading a book and then seeing the movie and comparing the two afterward. Most of the time I find the book to be superior because it has so much more in it, is more complex and detailed and allows for a greater degree of imagination, but on rare occasion I find myself preferring the movie. This is one of those cases.

Man on Fire is about Creasy, a mercenary who has lost his will to live-there's nothing to live for anymore so why continue?-when he gets a job as a bodyguard for a talkative young girl who finds her way into his heart. But when she is kidnapped and killed, he seeks revenge on those who did it.

A few words about the movie: with Dakota Fanning and Morgan Freeman in the cast, you've already got some major talent in the mix. But I think that what actually made the movie better was some of the changes they made to the actual story (specifically that the girl was kidnapped but not killed).

I think the change in ending was a huge thing in the story because the ending of the book was so unsatisfying. The last third of the book was Creasy going from one person to the next and killing them. The little girl, Pinta, was supposed to have changed his way of relating to the world and yet he ended up resorting to revenge killings and losing his life. It just seemed like he didn't learn anything in the end. I think also the timing of when it turned out that the girl died really hurt the book because it was so early on. There was no feeling of potential hope or the possibility that maybe she could be saved. I think that the potential for her to be brought home safely (whether or not she ended up dead in the end) might have made a big difference both in my feelings for Creasy and how I felt about the book overall.

The author also had a tendency to over-explain things and box them into packages. "She was the type of woman that..." is the sort of phrase that he used a lot. I hate when people are given categories and boxed into types. People are complex, no two people are exactly the same, and giving people a "type" has always been something that bothers me. (Sort of in the way that I hate when fantasy writers have two different nations that live near each other and has they have very distinct physical features. They live near each other, interact, and intermarry, they are not going to look so different that you can tell what city they come from!)

There was a lot of back story that didn't feel like it was really relevant and characters that felt like they were just thrown in their in order to add more pages.

Overall, it wasn't bad (definitely readable and mostly a smooth narrative). It was good enough to finish, but I would certainly not seek out another book by AJ Quinnell.