Death Wish

This is one excellent book. I'd say it's the ultimate vigilante book- not because the protagonist, Paul Benjamin(AKA Paul Kersey in the movies) is such a great fighter or gunman. This is no James Bond/Jack Reacher style anti-hero. I think it's much more realistic than those novels were to me as I've read most of the Reachers and all of the Bonds. This is more like if any of us took up this vigilante role after suffering a tremendous loss as Mr. Benjamin does. Paul Benjamin is nothing special physically although he seems to be pretty smart. He's just a guy who decides to act, instead of just talking or fantasizing about revenge.

This book is different from the movie. In the movie there is a subplot involving the Detective Ochoa character and his pursuit of the "Vigilante." You'll get none of that pursuit subplot in here. However, you do get a full interview with Ochoa in a magazine that pretty well sums that storyline up. So basically, less fluff and fewer pages, but I'm glad. Too often, crime novels get bogged down with pointless subplots, of which this book has none. It's all about Paul Benjamin's dark journey through dealing with the death of his wife and the loss of his daughter who seeps into madness from the attack that has already happened when the book opens. The graphic account of this the movie gave would have been better left out in my opinion although I can see the idea of showing the brutality of if, seeing as how the audience might be more inclined to feel pity for the vigilante and be on his side. For me, knowing they were brutalized is enough.

This book is short read. I read through it in one day and I must say it was a day well spent. I marked steady on the question about pacing because it is quite steady through about three quarters of it, but don't worry. I'd check fast after that. If you liked the movie, you should love this one as it delves pretty well into the psychology of the vigilante and what he's really thinking which surprised me on some levels and not in a bad way but you just get a deeper look at the man which is the point of reading books over watching movies for me. I highly recommend this one in every way. It will leave you wanting more. Death Sentence is now on my reading list.

There's a reason why Garfield's novel of vigilante justice resonated so well with both the reading a film-going population of the seventies. The economic and sociopolitical struggles of that decade was woven deep into the very cultural existence at the time. Death Wish - with its lingering look at the emotional deterioration of the survivor of inner-city gang violence that eventually leads to violent assaults in a desperate attempt to achieve some sort of societal (if not cosmic) justice - managed to appeal not only to a segment of the population that wished to retaliate against increasing crime and disharmony with bloody retribution, but also to those who feared this kind of romanticized barbarism.

Garfield achieves this dual status by allowing the reader to remain empathetic to the plight of Paul Benjamin after his wife and daughter are attacked (and the wife killed) by drug addicted street thugs, but doesn't manufacture exterior excuses or rationalizations for his increasingly misanthropic worldview and behavior, enabling one to understand without condoning, or conversely, to cheer on Benjamin without losing sight of the disconnect with humanity caused by his actions. In other hands, Death Wish would be just another men's adventure novel (exactly what the film franchise became, ironically), but instead it is a journey into the depths of human desperation, obsession, and ultimately, personal retribution.

This is a masterpiece of literary writing. Even though most people associate the title with DEATH WISH, the movie,The novel is orders of magnitude better. Garfield explores grieving, anger frustration and a yearning for justice in cool, dispassionate prose that appeals to the reader, not in knee-jerk reaction but in a more human approach that speaks to a condition we all can easily imagine happening to us.

Fascinating read. Of course, I am familiar with the movie but didn't go beyond the 1st sequel. Which I didn't like as much as the first movie. The book is outstanding and with 30 plus years since its publication, it still stands up. It's like traveling back in time and reliving a period of New York that is long gone. The book's ending is better than the more iconic movie's end, frankly. But read it and find out for yourself.

Death Wish wasn't bad, it gets extra credit for making the protagonist a CPA. In the movie Charles Bronson's character is an architect because they didn't thing audiences would buy a CPA as a vigilante. As others have mentioned, it feels like this book is missing something, like a third act. Half the book is build up to an awakening and the ending comes too fast. Still, it's fun to see where the movie came from. This was one of the few cases where I thought the movie was actually better than the book.

A different kind of book for a different kind of time. Manhattan is dangerous, and liberal Paul Benjamin - Kersey in the movies - has a tragedy strike. He gets un-liberal really quickly. Though a lot of his homicidal actions are somewhat dated by today's camera-heavy culture, it still makes for a great book.

Different time, but great book!

I read the book long ago and am now refreshing my memory of it with the audiobook on MP3 CD. After the opening hook, the narrative takes a long, boring time getting to his discovery of the attack on wife and daughter. Slow moving then. Reasonable adeptness at description of character and place. But far too many of the characters, far too often, have this tentative way of conversing with one another. "I don't know." "Maybe." "I hope I haven't."

One of the rare instances where the movie was better than the book.

Saw the movie about 30 years ago

The plot is good. The author just over did it in describing what was going on, what the main character was seeing, doing, feeling.