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The Tower

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Richard Martin Stern's The Tower is one of the two novels that Irwin Allen's production of The Towering Inferno was based, the other being The Glass Inferno by Scorita and Robinson.

On the gala opening of the latest world's tallest building, an unstable construction worker detonates a bomb and starts a fire that spirals quickly out of control, leaving the celebrants trapped on the top floors. As the fire climbs closer and the situation grows grimmer, the characters true natures are revealed, and some are not pretty. The elements Irwin Allen used in his film version are easily found, but they work far better in the source material. An excellent suspense story with a refreshing and somber finale, highly recommended.

"The Tower" provided the suspenseful plot and approximate building height for the movie, "The Towering Inferno" -- but the blockbuster movie wisely left this book's unsatisfactory characters and dialogue behind.

In "The Tower," a corrupt electrical contractor builds the world's tallest firetrap, and a deranged worker sets off an electrical surge that turns the lower-Manhattan skyscraper into a towering you-know-what.

Strong on technical details and a grim sense of foreboding, the book unfortunately falls short in character development: There is too much of it at exactly the wrong moments. Worse, the characters seem less than fully developed: Several characters speak with a similar vocabulary and rhythm, as if the author could not give them common human distinctiveness. Instead of allowing character actions and expressions to speak for themselves, the author spends inordinate time telling us (via narration) about several characters that are really little more than shallow early-Seventies cliches: an amoral feminist wife, a maverick governor, an Irish cop. As a result, any dramatic buildup is repeatedly knocked down by stretches of ponderous reading.

Thankfully, the book is stronger in basic plot than the book to which it is often compared: "The Glass Inferno," which served as half the inspiration of "The Towering Inferno." The notion of an electrical fire erupting throughout The Tower's 125-story building is, frankly, more compelling than The Glass Inferno's storage-closet fire in a 66-story building. And The Tower's rather dark conclusion is now -- given certain real-world events -- more plausible than Inferno's heroic waterlogged climax.

I first read this book as a teen-ager in the 1970s, and read it again recently. Then and now, this book's characters were forgettable, but its grim vision of the outcome of a major skyscraper fire haunted me afterward.

A good read, however I found this book somewhat tedious in parts. One of two novels that inspired Irwin Allen's blockbuster disaster movie "The Towering Inferno", I saw the movie before I read the book, and it doesn't live up to what I expected. Not quite as hard hitting as I would have liked, the technical details are well written, but it lacks a punch elsewhere.

THE TOWER
Richard Martin Stern
ISBN 0679503633

"The Tower" is the world' stallest building at 125 storeys. Built in downtown New York, the city has put millions towards its construction. Its architects and designers think it is perfect, but on the day of the opening copies of unauthorized changes are sent to them.
Meanwhile, an ex-employee at the tower, John Connors, has entered the building posing as an electrician. Unknown to the security guards he is carrying, in his tool box, plastic explosives with which he will seek revenge.
While preparation is under way for the opening ceremony the contractors are seeking to find if the changes were made, and what they mean. The building's architect, Nat Wilson is determined to find who forged his signature on the change orders.

The ceremony goes ahead as planned, but disaster soon strikes. A fire on a 4th floor apartment as well as an explosion in the basement wreak havoc with the organisers. As the investigators soon discover; the changes were extremely serious. The situation has suddenly gotten out of hand: 120 or so people, trapped 1500 feet up, with governors and senators amongst them, and a raging fire beneath them.
The fire soon eradicates both the stairs and elevators as possibilities for escape. The men on the ground must work against the clock, and the searing heat of the flames, to rescue the "hostages" of the tower.

Stern tells this tale at a terrific pace, building the suspense right up until the final trumpet; blown on a slightly different note. His characters develop their personalities through-out the book and finally show what each of them is made of.

"The Tower" is the world' stallest building at 125 storeys. Built in downtown New York, the city has put millions towards its construction. Its architects and designers think it is perfect, but on the day of the opening copies of unauthorized changes are sent to them.
Meanwhile, an ex-employee at the tower, John Connors, has entered the building posing as an electrician. Unknown to the security guards he is carrying, in his tool box, plastic explosives with which he will seek revenge.
While preparation is under way for the opening ceremony the contractors are seeking to find if the changes were made, and what they mean. The building's architect, Nat Wilson is determined to find who forged his signature on the change orders.

The ceremony goes ahead as planned, but disaster soon strikes. A fire on a 4th floor apartment as well as an explosion in the basement wreak havoc with the organisers. As the investigators soon discover; the changes were extremely serious. The situation has suddenly gotten out of hand: 120 or so people, trapped 1500 feet up, with governors and senators amongst them, and a raging fire beneath them.
The fire soon eradicates both the stairs and elevators as possibilities for escape. The men on the ground must work against the clock, and the searing heat of the flames, to rescue the "hostages" of the tower.

Stern tells this tale at a terrific pace, building the suspense right up until the final trumpet; blown on a slightly different note. His characters develop their personalities through-out the book and finally show what each of them is made of.

It's not AS good as "The Glass Inferno" (the other book that "The Towering Inferno" is based on), but it's a good read. I just think that the characters could have been developed more. But it's still an interesting story that makes you think!

I read this book as a Reader's Digest condensed version when I was a young teenager. It gripped me from the first page and wouldn't let go until I'd finished it. More than a decade later, I still remember it in vivid detail. The characters, the action, the suspense, they're all still fresh in my mind. There aren't many books that memorable, or many authors who can create them. Richard Martin Stern is one such author, and The Tower is one such book. For any fan of gripping thrillers, this is definitely one for you!

You might be questioning yourself after reading this tedious book.

If you are a fan of the movie "The Towering Inferno", which was based on two novels, The Glass Inferno and The Tower, there is only one book you can read to see where the blockbuster disaster flick got most of its material: The Glass Inferno.

With all due respect, The Tower is quite a boring book. A 125th story building went up in blaze because of some disgruntled employee. The rest of the book is basically a race against time to get the people on the top floors out. But however, somehow I didn't feel there was an urgency in getting the people out because Stern tend to focus more on the subplot of figuring the cause of the blaze. It got to the point where I said: What happened to the fire? I thought we had a building burning in here somewhere!

In all, the movie resemble more on the Glass Inferno. The only things unique to the Tower which the movie retained was several characters: Susan Blakely's Patty Simmons and her wayward husband. Her father (who already had a counterpart in Wyndom Leroux of the Glass Inferno, in a way, Patty's counterpart in Glass Inferno was Thelma Leroux) who dropped from a heart attack after hearing his son in law was fooling around with the architect's wife, the Ramsays and the politicans. Oh yes, also the breeches buoy.

Speaking of that, there was a scene where some girl got drunk and took off her clothes and rode the breeches buoy in nothing but high heels [...].

Well, we are not talking about Shakespeare....but when you have something as gratuitous as that, it looked as if the author was desperately trying to liven up what was turning out to be a dull story.

And The Tower was quite dull.