Before there was the movie, and the other movie, there was, The Book.

I liked the first movie.

I loved the second movie. Denzel Washington. John Travolta. Luis Guzman. What’s not to like?

But the book, ah, I loved the book.

“Steever stood on the southbound local platform of the Lexington Avenue line at Fifty-ninth Street and chewed his gum with a gentle motion of his heavy jaws, like a soft-mouthed retriever schooled to hold game firmly but without bruising it.”

When  I slip my brittle yellowing copy (hardcover, circa 1973, bought second-hand, sometime in the eighties) off the shelf, I fondle it like a great memory. I read this book many many times. I read it for the:

Plot: Hijacking a New York subway train. Okay….

Pacing: “Is there any point to killing innocent people if it’s not necessary?”

. . . and for dialog:.  “Nobody is innocent.” 

For The New York State of Mind: “Cut a New Yorker open and you would discover convolutions in his brain, tracks in his nervous system, that were not present in any other urban citizenry anywhere.”

And for the A + multiples points of view.  Even minor characters jump off the page; like the Mayor’s aide: “His Honor was lying on the face, his pajamas pulled down and his bare rump waving in the hair as the doctor profiled toward it with a hypodermic syringe. It was a shapely and practically hairless butt, and Lasalle thought; if mayors were elected on the beauty of their asses, His Honor could reign forever.”

I could go on. And I will.

Because, we should never forget.

First come the words.