Nothing Lasts Forever (Joe Leland #2) 2Stars

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Title: Nothing Lasts Forever
Series: Joe Leland #2
Author: Roderick Thorp
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 145
Words: 67K

First off, this was the book that the movie Die Hard was based on. And let me say, the movie adaptation is a FAR superior action/adventure/thriller story than this book could ever hope to be.

This was a bitter, bitter book. Leland’s wife is dead, his daughter is working in LA for a big company and has 2 kids and is divorced. She’s sleeping with her boss and they’re both snorting coke like it’s 1980. Which it almost is. The company has made a huge massive deal with the Chilean government and has a vault full of millions in cash. The problem is, the deal is just a cover for the company to smuggle military grade weapons down to the Dictatorship. And some german terrorist group wants to put a stop to it AND steal all the money. So Leland has to fight the badguys all by himself, watch helicopters explode and good cops get killed by bad leadership and then watch as his daughter is dragged to her death by the leader of the terrorists as he falls out of the building from the 40^th story.

Leland is bitter, cynical, disillusioned and spouting off like a Democrat every step of the way while acting like “a good guy with a gun” (which is a myth according to democrats but a real thing in reality). It was very schizophrenic.

And while it was 1/3rd the length of the first book, it was still just as filled with navel gazing bull kaka as the first one. This was a literary novel filled with self-loathing, hatred and despair desperately trying to pretend to be an action thriller. And it flipping failed. If this hadn’t been turned into such a block buster of a movie, nobody would know this book or probably this author. Which might just be for the best. Thorp is (was?) a pretentious wanker and I hope he got a lot of beating from life. Self-pitying assholes who do nothing but whine like him deserve a good beating.

Now I’m off to watch Die Hard to wash the disgusting taste of this disgusting book out of my mind.

★★☆☆☆

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From Wikipedia.org

Retired NYPD detective Joe Leland is visiting the 40-story office headquarters of the Klaxon Oil Corporation in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, where his daughter Stephanie Leland Gennaro works.

While he is waiting for his daughter’s Christmas party to end, a group of German Autumn–era terrorists take over the skyscraper. The gang is led by the brutal Anton “Little Tony the Red” Gruber. Joe had known about Gruber through a counter-terrorist conference he had attended years prior. Barefoot, Leland slips away and manages to remain undetected in the gigantic office complex. Armed with only his Browning pistol and in communication with Los Angeles Police sergeant Al Powell and his belligerent supervisor, Dwayne Robinson, Leland fights off the terrorists one by one in an attempt to save the 74 hostages, his daughter, and grandchildren.

Gruber and the terrorists kill Mr. Rivers, the CEO of the Klaxon building, and proceed to steal documents that will publicly expose the Klaxon corporation’s dealings with Chile’s junta. They also intend to deprive Klaxon of the proceeds of the corrupt deal of $6,000,000 in cash by attempting to access a safe. Leland interferes with this plan by stealing explosives and progressively killing terrorists and receiving multiple injuries in the process.

Leland kills most of the terrorists and, despite no help from the police, faces off with the leader of the terrorist group, Anton Gruber, who is holding his daughter hostage. Gruber falls to his death after being shot by Leland, taking Stephanie with him. Blaming Klaxon for the terrorist attack and his daughter’s death, Leland throws the cash out of the window himself. Once Leland is back on the street, the last terrorist, Karl, who was presumed dead earlier, returns and starts a shooting rampage, killing several police officers (including Robinson) and a doctor in the process, before Sgt. Powell finally kills him, allowing Leland to receive medical care.

– The Detective (Book 1)