Doom Wind

by Max Gunther

A brutally frank expose of prison life! Clarence Hastings had been like every other brother willing to take a chance on the man coming down on him bad when he had sampled seventeen-year-old Judy Latimore's milky whiteness. But for him the black boy's dream became a nightmare when he was sentenced to three-to-five behind gray granite walls where three thousand inmates mostly black were confined in cells barely suitable for a dog run. The prison was an island to itself; a society with its own rules wherein money and muscle became the unwritten laws. It was a place where time got inside a man's soul and twisted and scarred it into something that made puny boys bend to the asshole bandits for the protection of brothers, and made black dudes bitter with hate and mean with frustration. In whitey's stinking jail Clarence was pitted against his own kind. A good grip on a homemade shank was better than day-to-day degradation when the hardened ones tried to play him cheap, and he was spurred on by the gnawing anger at the injustice that penetrated from the courtroom to the prison. That, and his unshakable promise that somebody was going to pay for what had gone down!

Genres: Fiction

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Max Gunther was an Anglo-American journalist and writer. He was the author of 26 books, including his investment best-seller, The Zurich Axioms.

Born in England, Gunther moved to the United States at age of 11 after his father, Franz Heinrich became the manager of the New York branch of a leading Swiss bank, SBC.

Gunther graduated from Princeton University in 1949 and served in the United States Army from 1950 to 1951.

He worked at Business Week magazine from 1951 to 1955 and during the following two years he was the contributing editor for Time Magazine. He also contributed to Playboy, True, Reader's Digest, TV Guide, McCall's, and Saturday Evening Post.

Reviews

[Craig "NEEDS MORE DAMN TIME TO READ !!!!" · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at page 78. Nothing particularly bad with the book was just dull, dull, dull.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gets five stars from me because it is a riveting fast paced (well once you get past the obligatory set-up - the oblivious politicians, the arrogant media etc.) disaster novel set in NYC. It hurt some to read the little paragraph about the Twin Towers (publication date 1986) stating that because their girders ran all down the length of the buildings deep into the bedrock that was the one structure nobody worried about blowing down in 400 mph winds. The descriptions of the effects of wind were stunning. I have read this before and it is still a favorite. Love me a good disaster story and if it is set someplace familiar to me so much the better.

[Terry and dog · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this story. I am a sucker for disaster stories and this book about an extreme wind caused by a comet, and the destruction it brings, fit the bill nicely.
A lot of the book is about the build up to the event and the denial from some people and the people that were believers about what was to come, and those reporting the story, and some that didn't want them repoting the story. The characters were good, and it was easy to get into the swing of it.
The last few chapters were about the actual event (my favourite part), and there was some good action. The story only continues until shortly after the storm, and it is left up to us to imagine how they will cope. I like that it didn't continue on too long, I am tired of the stories where looters and evil people run rampant after an apocalypse. I prefer the build up and actual event, which is why I really liked this. It reads very easily and is like a movie, Earthquake or the Towering Inferno style.

[Ginger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong story about a super wind that distroys a city.

[Clifford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great disaster novel. I've read it many times and I still love it.