Nothing Lasts Forever (Thorp novel)

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Nothing Lasts Forever
Thorpe - Nothing lasts forever.jpg
First edition
Author Roderick Thorp
LanguageEnglish
Genre Thriller novel
Publisher W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date
1979
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
ISBN 0-393-01249-2
OCLC 5101628
813/.5/4
LC Class PZ4.T55 No 1979 PS3570.H67
Preceded by The Detective  

Nothing Lasts Forever is a 1979 action thriller novel by American author Roderick Thorp, a sequel to his 1966 novel The Detective . The novel is mostly known through its 1988 film adaptation Die Hard starring Bruce Willis. In 2012, the book was brought back into print and released as an ebook for the 24th anniversary of the film.

Contents

Plot

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 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 million 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 Powell finally kills him, allowing Leland to receive medical care.

Characters

Background and film adaptation

In 1975, author Roderick Thorp saw the film The Towering Inferno , about a skyscraper which catches on fire. After seeing the film, Thorp fell asleep and had a dream of seeing a man being chased through a skyscraper by men with guns. He woke up and later took that idea and turned it into The Detective sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever.

Roderick Thorp decided for the book to be a sequel to The Detective so it could be made into a follow-up film starring Frank Sinatra as Joe Leland. Thus, the storyline hypothetically takes place some decades after its predecessor (as Leland was age thirty-six in that novel but is retired by the sequel). Sinatra declined the offer. It was then offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and a number of other actors until Bruce Willis signed on for the role. [1]

The film was re-titled Die Hard was altered to be a stand-alone film with no connections to Thorp's original novel, although many of its memorable scenes, characters, and dialogue are adapted directly from the sequel. Some of the biggest changes in the film included making the protagonist a younger detective in the middle of his career, the changing of his name from Joe Leland to John McClane, changing the person he visits at the skyscraper, to his estranged wife, and the American Klaxon Oil Corporation becoming the Japanese Nakatomi Corporation. The "terrorists" in the film are actually professional thieves seeking $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds kept in the building's vault, and are only posing as terrorists to draw attention away from the robbery. In the film, most of them are German, including their leader, Gruber, whose given name is changed to Hans. The rest are of varying ethnicities and nationalities, who unlike in the novel, are all men. The ending of the novel is also different: The novel, Leland's daugther is killed, whereas in the film, John McClane saves his wife, Holly.

Similarly, Willis explained in a 1988 interview with KXAS-TV's entertainment reporter Bobbie Wygant that he acted out McClane with enough fear, anxiety, and vulnerability to make audiences believe that he could indeed possibly be killed because of what happened in the story, as Joseph Leland could possibly have died of his injuries in the book. [2]

Some of the most famous action sequences taken from the book are:

Reception

The Los Angeles Times called Nothing Lasts Forever "a ferocious, bloody, raging book so single-mindedly brilliant in concept and execution it should be read at a single sitting". [3]

References

  1. "'Die Hard': How Bruce Willis Changed the Movies". The Daily Beast Archive. June 29, 2012. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
  2. "Classic Interview: Bruce Willis for "Die Hard" 1988". The Bobbie Wygant Archive. June 20, 2012. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  3. "The 25th Anniversary of 'Die Hard' – How John McClane Changed Action Movies (and Us) Forever". ScreenCrush. July 15, 2013. Retrieved December 13, 2018.

Sources