Black Sunday by Thomas Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Thomas Harris' debut novel centres around a terrorist plot on American soil and the international effort to hunt down the terrorists.

Members of Black September, a terrorist group, are making the final arrangements for an attack within the United States. Ambushed in Beirut as part of an Israeli-led mission, their numbers are severely depleted. But, underestimated by those who brought down the cell, Dahlia Iyad escapes with her life and returns to America to continue facilitating the planned attack.

Michael Lander, an ex-marine and Vietnam veteran, feeling betrayed by the American government after his years of service and what he was subjected to as a prisoner of war, is determined to seek revenge in a demonstration that will also claim maximum casualties. Together, he and Dahlia plot to construct and detonate a bomb that will claim millions of lives.

David Kabakov, an agent with Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, travels to America, determined to hunt down the surviving members of the terror group and foil their plot when it becomes clear that the mission in Beirut has not neutralised the threat.

Character-driven rather than action-driven, the novel's shining moments are the detailed explorations of the characters' psychology, backstories and personal relationships, reminiscent of Harris' later psychological thrillers. With a backdrop of the global political climate of the 1970's - this is the midst of the Cold War and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War (a conflict that drew in both the US and USSR) - you are also immediately struck by how little the world has changed; conflict in the Middle East continues to this day - significantly the conflict between Israel and Palestine; and between extremist Islamist terror groups and the West, significantly the US. Terror attacks over the last twenty years, notably 9/11, lend a chilling plausibility to events and the novel does not suffer for reading it over four decades later.

In a race against time, Kabakov hunts the terrorists to the eleventh hour, building to a dramatic action-packed climax as the terror plot unfolds. A gripping political thriller that hooks until the very end, 'Black Sunday' is an early demonstration of Harris' skill at exploring the horrors human beings are capable of inflicting on each other.



View all my reviews
Visit me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter
Follow me on Instagram