Is New York Burning [Paperback]

Dominique Lapierre (Author), Larry Collins (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2004

Three years after september the 11th, terrorist have hidden an atomic bomb in the heart of New york. If the president does not forve his Israeli allies to abandon all the land they have occupied in the aftermath of the 1967 war, New York will be wiped out. Will he give to blackmail? Two years of research, an impressive number of documents studied, scores of people interviewed , make this reading a diabolical thriller, and a work of extraordinary force set in the heart of today's world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A master Palestinian terrorist seeking retribution against Israel hooks up first with Saddam and then, after Saddam's capture, with Osama; through the latter, he acquires a nuclear bomb from Pakistan, ships it to New York and, with a crew babysitting it, threatens to detonate the bomb unless Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders—within five days. The rest of this novel from the late Collins (The Road to Armageddon), who died this past June, and collaborator Lapierre, is basically a procedural: what does the U.S. government do, and how does it do it, as the hours tick by. All of the characterizations are cardboard, but they're convincing enough to sustain the book: there are fictionalizations of everyone from Saddam and bin Laden to Bush, Ariel Sharon, Pervez Musharraf and New York mayor Mike Bloomberg. There's a particularly touching interaction between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan. The FBI and police work is reasonably realized. Early chapters patiently and sympathetically render the logic of and reasoning behind the Islamist nuclear threat, but the real twist comes on day four, when the U.S. government begins mobilizing for possible military action against Israel to force a withdrawal from the West Bank. The publisher claims 350,000 hardcover copies already in print in Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French and Polish; one imagines it has little to do with the quality of the writing. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

The authors have also written, Is Paris burning? O Jerusalem, Freedom at midnight

Product Details

• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Full Circle Publishing Ltd (June 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 8176211575
• ISBN-13: 978-8176211574
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,796,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rip-off, March 1, 2006

By 

Richard Ellis (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Is New York Burning? (Hardcover)

Lapierre and Collins have plagiarized their own work. In 1980, they published a novel called "The Fifth Horseman," which was exactly the same as this one except that it's been updated, and where the villian in the first version was Khaddafi, it's now Osama Bin Laden. Same atomnic weapon smuggled into New York, same NY detective solves the case. How shameful to repackage the same dumb plot by changing a few names. The name of the publisher gives it all away: Phoenix House.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars For age group 5-8..., February 18, 2006

By 

Wheretic (India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Is New York Burning? (Hardcover)

...and that too 'cos the tots can maybe learn a few famous names across the globe while reading this tripe.But even they won't be taken in by the flimsy plot and the almost comical unravelling.From the onset of the nuclear 'threat' the denouement becomes irritatingly obvious and the only feel-good factor about this book is that every reader will definitely come out thinking that he can do an infinitely better job than the authors....go read 3 little pigs,anyday more creative and more intense.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the worst pieces of writing ever, December 15, 2005

By 

Typical - See all my reviews

This review is from: Is New York Burning? (Hardcover)

I agree with "The Reader"'s review. I can't believe the authors really wrote this book. I wanted to give up a few pages into the reading but since I had spent my money (unwisely) on buying one instead of (wisely) renting it, I plowed through to the end. The dialogues are laughably artificial, the plot is moronic, and the cliches make the reading pure torture. Please avoid this book like the plague. Spend your time and money elsewhere. I wish I could give this a negative 5 stars but 1 is the lowest I am allowed to go.