BIO: Biography of Thomas Harris (Teal Waterstrat (SHS), Mississippi Writers and Musicians) BIO: Thomas Harris (William Streibling, Mississippi Writers Page) AUTHOR PAGE: Thomas Harris (Random House)

See also: Thomas Harris ( 2 books reviewed)

So I packed a baseball mitt and a Bible one time and when the guards questioned me I said the former was to catch a ball if it came into the stands and the latter was in case the Goodyear blimp was coming in low. Rightly or not, Security developed a concern that fans were going to turn violent and they took to searching your bags on the way into the game. In the mid-'70s, when the Cosmos were popular, we used to go to the games and sit amidst various ethnic enclaves where we could root against Giorgio Chinaglia for hogging the ball. Giants Stadium had notoriously officious security staff, eventually leading to the death of a Grateful Dead concert-goer in the late '80s. It also provided yours truly a memorable bit. Though it shows some of the inevitable defects of a first effort-underwritten characters, plot jumps, clunky dialogue in places, etc.-it succeeds as a thriller and made Mr. Harris who followed through to the novel's conclusion and delivery. The germ of the story came from brainstorming by three reporters after the Munich Massacre, but it was Mr. Harris makes the psychotic more interesting than the rest of the characters, to the point where you're not entirely unlikely to be rooting for him and for his elegant scheme to work. Meanwhile, after a raid on a Black September cell reveals that an attack in America is in the works, the Israelis dispatch a crack terrorist hunter, Major David Kabakov, to the States.Īs in his later Hannibal Lecter books, Mr. Soon the beautiful Black September agent Dahlia Iyad arrives on his doorstep and, after convincing herself that his plan will work and that she can manage him, sends for the explosives that will be required. To that end, he first formulates a brilliant plot to pilot the advertising blimp he captains into the big game and then contacted the PLO to obtain their help in making his dream a reality. Michael Lander is your archetypal disturbed Vietnam vet, who returned from the war with all of his childhood psychoses in full bloom, determined to exact a spectacular vengeance on the country and the ex-wife who betrayed him. Harris wrote, almost lovingly, about blowing up the Super Bowl and murdering everyone in the stadium. Buzz Bissinger and Peter Gent wrote passionately about how the game exploits its players. But no one has ever captured that weird relationship better than Thomas Harris, in his rookie novel, Black Sunday. Indeed, the literature, such as it is, of the sport can be best characterized as hostile-think North Dallas Forty and Friday Night Lights. Football has become America's most popular sport without anyone ever liking it and no one loving it.

Black Sunday by Thomas Harris