Silver Star

John Locke #3

by Stirling Silliphant

PAPERBACK

Genres: Crime

372 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1986

About the author

Stirling Dale Silliphant was an American novelist, screenwriter and producer. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, moved to Glendale, California as a child, graduated from Hoover High School, and educated at the University of Southern California. He is probably best known for his screenplay adaptations of In the Heat of the Night (which earned him an Oscar for screenplay adaptation)and Charly, which was adapted from Flowers for Algernon and co-creating the television series Route 66.

Other features as screenwriter include Irwin Allen productions
The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure, adapting both films from previously published novels into one cohesive screenplay each.

In the seventies, the quality of the projects he worked on began to slip, even though they did well at the box office. He wrote the screenplays for The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Shaft in Africa (1973), The Towering Inferno (1974) and The Swarm (1978).

During the 1980's he moved to Thailand, but continued to write for TV movies and mini-series up to his death. His last work was a screenplay for The Grass Harp (1995), which he also co-produced. He died of prostate cancer in Bangkok, Thailand, on April 26, 1996.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Silver Star is the last and best of a trilogy. The others are Steal Tiger and Bronze Bell. Stirling Silliphant's wife was from Vietnam and he lived in Bangkok later in life. His knowledge of Southeast Asia shines through in this book. The story is an entertaining action-thriller, but I found him to be the most interesting when talking about the areas customs, religion, philosophy and history. Stirling was a veteran TV and movie scriptwriter who wrote quickly. He wrote many of the scripts for the landmark TV series Route 66 while episodes were being filmed on location.