On a quiet street in a peaceful English village two small brothers buy candy at a sweetshop and then disappear in a wrenching explosion. A tough New York cabbie and his streetwise girlfriend submit without protest to the perverted demands of a total stranger. A young couple with everything to live for suddenly and inexplicably take their own lives.
With these violently shocking, seemingly unlinked events, Brothers--the chilling, fast-paced new novel by master of suspense William Goldman--begins. Yet alongside these startling scenes comes an even more astonishing revelation. For on an isolated island in the Caribbean, a man slowly regathers his once-lost strength. His fingerprints have been removed, his voice thickened, his face altered beyond all recognition. This is the man thought by the world of Marathon Man to be dead, a consummate, seemingly indestructible killing professional who has been summoned into service once again by the ultrasecret Division. Entering an unfamiliar, irrevocably changed world after his six-year limbo, he soon learns the terrifying thrust of his mission: This is going to be a world war. America is going to start it. He is only one of three people alive who knows it. And he is the single man designated to stop it.
To accomplish this almost impossible task, he must uncover a doomsday scenario of bioengineering gone amok. He must ally himself with the very man who hates him the most. He must set in motion his ultimate plans for the obliteration of an evil conspiracy, propelling himself and one other man--a man as close to himself as the bond of brothers can make him--toward their final, triumphant reunion. If both can survive...
In this stunning sequel that is even more imaginative and relentlessly gripping than Marathon Man, William Goldman returns to the brand of storytelling he knows best, a deftly rendered world of global intrigue, personal loyalties, and unending surprises.
Editorial Reviews
"Goldman is a master storyteller." --New York Times Book Review
"Brothers is really an incredible story. And yet it's believable because Goldman is so good. If he's not hooking you with the plot he's charming you with his prose. From page to page you'll be dying to know what happens next--My God, what's going on?--right up to the very last page." --Elmore Leonard, author of Glitz and Bandits.
"In this belated sequel to Marathon Man Goldman jumps several years into the future of the Levy brothers. Thomas is now a history professor at Columbia, and Scylla, the lethal secret agent left for dead in New York's Lincoln Center, has been restored and reactivated as a top-level killer by his shadowy masters in the U.S. government. In the nether world of Washington policy-making science has become a major weapon in a bizarre struggle between hawks and doves, and Scylla's assigned role is to eliminate two scientists whose invention of new creative killing methods may be more dangerous than the problem they set out to solve. The imaginative, if sometimes bizarre, plot winds its way through seemingly unconnected episodes of considerable violence before reaching an ironic conclusion which pulls all the threads together." --Library Journal
About the Author
William Goldman is an Academy Award–winning author of screenplays, plays, memoirs, and novels. His first novel, The Temple of Gold (1957), was followed by the script for the Broadway army comedy Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961). He went on to write the screenplays for many acclaimed films, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), for which he won two Academy Awards. He adapted his own novels for the hit movies Marathon Man (1976) and The Princess Bride (1987). William Goldman passed away on November 16, 2018.
