MARATHON MAN BY: WILLIAM GOLDMAN

FEATURES: MARATHON MAN  BY: WILLIAM GOLDMAN

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A) CONDITION BOOK: NEAR FINE - HARD BOUND

B) CONDITION DUST JACKET: VERY GOOD - NOT PRICE CLIPPED

C) FIRST EDITION - FIRST PRINTING - DELACORTE PUBLISHERS 1974

D) NOTE:  CONSIDERED ONE OF GOLMAN'S BEST NOVELS.  MADE INTO A MEMORABLE FILM STARRING DUSTIN HOFFMAN + LAWRENCE OLIVER.  FOCUSING ON THE SPINE PRESENT A COMMON FAULT WITH THIS BOOK.  END PAPERS SLIGHTLY SHORTER THAN A TEXT BOOK AND BINDING ERROR INDICATING A FIRST PRESS. 309 PAGES.

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BOOK GRADING CATEGORIES:

FINE

VERY GOOD

GOOD

FAIR

POOR
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About:

Marathon Man is a 1974 conspiracy thriller novel by William Goldman. It was Goldman's most successful thriller novel, and his second suspense novel.^[2]  In 1976 it was made into a film of the same name, with a screenplay by Goldman, starring Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Olivier, and Roy Scheider and directed by John Schlesinger.

A former Nazi SS dentist at Auschwitz, Dr. Christian Szell, now residing in Paraguay, has been living on the proceeds of diamonds he extorted from prisoners there. The diamonds are kept at a bank in New York by his father. The sales and transfers of proceeds are facilitated by a secret US agency called "The Division" for whom Szell has provided information about other escaped Nazis. When his father dies in a car accident, Szell must come to New York himself to retrieve the diamonds, as there is no one else he can trust with them.

Meanwhile, at Columbia University, Thomas Babington "Tom" Levy,^[3] known by his brother as "Babe" (the first and middle names are a reference to Thomas Babington Macaulay,^[4] and the nickname is a reference to Babe Ruth) is a postgraduate student in history and an aspiring marathon runner. He is haunted by the suicide of his brilliant academic father, H.V. Levy, who was one of the victims of McCarthyism, when Babe was ten. Babe's PhD dissertation aims to clear his father's name of alleged Communist affiliations. Unbeknownst to Babe, his elder brother by ten years (and best friend), Henry David "Hank" Levy (after Henry David Thoreau), known by Babe as "Doc", works in The Division under the name "Scylla" and has been helping to move Szell's diamonds as part of his duties.

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