Customer Reviews

Man of the Hour

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

In these jaded times it sounds corny and false to say that a writer just keeps getting better and better, but in Peter Blauner's case, it's the absolute truth. Although his novels have the pacing of thrillers, I consider them to be the very best urban fiction of our age. From "Slow Motion Riot" to "Man of the Hour", Blauner has brilliantly dramatized the perils and rewards of life in urban America in a way that makes the territory his alone. If you dig a great story...if characters you'll never forget are your thing, make "Man of the Hour" the next book you read.

This is a book right out of today's headlines. Extremist Religious groups, Overzealous Media, Misguided youth, Violence, it's all in this book. Yet the plot brings this all together in one believable story. The author does a great job at showing each character and why they are performing such atrocities or why they have such courage to stand up for their believes. At some points you almost feel sorry for the bad guys because you know why they are in this predicament. This is a fast paced story with great characters and plot development, you will find yourself turning one page after another while you are engulfed in the story.

Peter Blauner did a great job in writing MAN OF THE HOUR because he took a fictional story and mixed it with reality. Blauner sends the message that our lives are not set because you could be going on with your normal life and then one act can change your life forever. He shows us this through David Fitzgerald, a teacher, who begins by getting everything ready for a field trip before all of the kids get on the bus, but one girl who was pregnant. The next thing you know the bus is in flames and he is saving his student's lives.
The character that sticks in my mind is Dave Fitzgerald, because he is going through a troublesome time in his life and then the bus blows up and and makes everything worse. The way he handled the problems at first showed that he was a weak man and then later he starts to handle the situation like he has been through it before.
I expected this book to be about a building blowing up and Dave Fitzgerald saving someone. As I was reading, things that I thought wouldn't happen did happen. I believe that this book should be made into a movie because the plot was always changing and it was extremly vivid. I would recommend this book to people who like suspense, action, and thrillers book because MAN OF THE HOUR has it all.

This book was compelling from the first page. The relationship between the main character Fitgerald and his flawed wife showed that heroes in books don't always have perfect lives. The terrorists lives were interesting but, only because I wanted to find out what they would do at the end.

There was nothing spectacular about this book, but for some reason I kept reading and reading. I think it is because anytime you see a tragedy happen on the news, you wonder how you would have reacted in that situation. You wonder if you could have been a hero. In this book, a boring average guy becomes a hero and has to deal with the resulting publicity. Then he becomes a suspect and has to overcome the adversity to get his life back.

I think the plot is what kept me reading, and not the characters or the style of the author. I don't think I'll read any more books by Blauner unless they have a great sounding plot, because I don't think he can carry a story on his own.

This book is a well written and fast paced narrative. It brings many social issues into the story, such as teachers effects on their students. It also combines the "hate USA" and Arab terrorism to make for a great story. This is the first book I have read by the author and I am very impressed. He is able to combine a few different plots together to create the whole picture. The characters are described in such great detail, you will have an excellent mental picture.

{Man of the Hour} Man of the Hour was a great book! The personality's of the characters seem so lively and real. You can visualize every detail in this book. David Fitzgerald, the main character, is the center of this book. After saving a student's life everything seems to surround him. He is soon publicized on TV and in a president's announcement affiliated with his heroic courage of saving a student's life. He seems so "air born" after everyone nation-wide knows of his name. Soon however David's life is about to be turned around, he becomes FBI's main victim of the bomb plot.

I definitely recommend that you read this book if you are into reading action and fictional modern events.

With "Man of the Hour," Peter Blauner continues to prove what a very, very good writer he is. Although his books are regularly categorized as "thrillers," they are much more than that. Quite simply, they're great novels-taut, insightful studies into what people do upon finding themselves in extreme circumstances. He certainly provides that again here. His reluctant hero, David Fitzgerald, is as fallible as any of us. And his villains-Mideast terrorists who could've so easily become cartoons in any lesser writer's hands, are complex, their motives understandable.The result is at once thought-provoking AND a great read. Blauner is one of the best.

This book is so excellent! I wake up in the middle of the night wondering what is happening in the book. Seriously. I've read other books by this same author and haved loved them all.

Both Man of the Hour and The Intruder get 5 stars.

More anxiety than action, more for the thinking reader.

Jihad comes to New York in Blauner's "Man Of The Hour," a Richard Jewell-like story of heroism gone sour. Enthusiastic inner-city English teacher David Fitzgerald saves his class from a terrorist bomb, becoming a feted media-darling until circumstances paint him as the prime suspect and his life is savaged more brutally than it was ever celebrated.

The reader knows from the beginning that tormented Nasser Hamdy, one of Fitzgerald's former students, is the bomber. Blauner's sympathetic and suspenseful portrayal of him shows youth manipulated by hatred, fanaticism and a desperation to belong.

Nasser, conflicted about murdering innocents, has numerous opportunities to reject his cell's escalating terrorism. His actions remain in doubt until the very end.

Fitzgerald teaches a "hero in literature" course, his father was a war hero but a cold man; he has always wondered how he would react in a perilous situation. Blauner's account of the teacher's overwhelming fear as smoke pours from the bombed bus and his sense of all eyes upon him, urging him to save his trapped student until he feels he has no choice, seems convincing, if not glorious. The same is true for his response to media attention and the let down as it fades.

But the story really takes off when the focus of attention is reversed. Gleefully brutalized by the media and the police, Fitzgerald succumbs to numb despair until the plight of his young son (already trapped between his unstable mother and the failure of his parents' marriage) rallies him to resist.

Meanwhile, the bombers are gearing up for another try.

Blauner ("Slow Motion Riot," "The Intruder") paints a vivid picture of an ordinary man reaching into the best and worst his soul has to offer to surmount insurmountable odds. The reader can't help but wonder how he or she would fare, given a similar nightmare.