Name that book!
Our good friend and dining critic Elizabeth Large has forwarded a request for you guys: Do you have any idea about the title or author of this book?
"I’ve been trying to locate an action-packed best seller I read that I believe was published in the early '90s. Of course, I can’t remember the title or the author, and I read it with Books on Tape, which is no longer renting, so I don’t even have details of a book jacket.
The opening is memorable. A successful businessman with a lovely wife goes to work one day and everyone he sees tries to kill him. They even bring in his wife to get him. He has no idea why. Eventually they evacuate the building to try to capture him (conveniently he’s an ex-Marine so he doesn’t make it easy).
As I remember, this is the only book he ever wrote."
So, any idea what this book might be? I like the "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" vibe, so I'm really curious to know myself!
Comments
The description actually sounds like the movie "The Game" with Michael Douglas, but there is no "based on" book. Wish you luck in your search@
Posted by: Amanda | February 5, 2010 6:17 PM
I immediately knew that I had read this book, but the title eluded me. I have a lot of smart book friends in a GoodRead group, so I posed this challenge to them today and within minutes had the title:
Vertical Run by Joseph Garber, published in 1996
Here is a brief description:
Each morning in his 45th floor executive office, David Elliot savors the quiet
moments until the workday begins.
Until today, when his boss walks in and aims a gun at him.
For the rest of the day, he will be trapped in his midtown office building, and
everyone David Elliot meets will try to kill him.
He has 24 hours to find out why. . .
Posted by: JoAnn | February 6, 2010 5:00 PM
I wonder if Duane Swierczynski read the Garber book before writing Severance Package, which was published a few years ago. The description of that book is:
David Murphy, the CEO of a Philadelphia financial company, summons his seven staffers for an important Saturday meeting, where he informs them that the business is being shut down, and that unfortunately he has to kill them all. Every escape route from the 36th-floor office has been sealed off or rigged with lethal sarin gas. Suddenly, mousy Molly Lewis pulls out a gun and puts a slug in Murphy's head. The resulting chaos sets off a panicked scramble, as the reader gradually learns that the business is a front for a covert intelligence group called CI-6. Thousands of miles away in Scotland, two men monitor Molly Lewis, who's actually a highly trained Polish operative named Ania Kuczun, as she performs her own private audition, which involves the systematic elimination of her co-workers using a truly imaginative array of methods.
Posted by: D Wiest | February 6, 2010 9:08 PM