Wild Card

by Raymond Hawkey

Wild Raymond Wild Ballantine FIRST First Edition Thus, First Printing. Not price-clipped. Published by Ballantine Books, 1974. 12mo. Paperback. Book is very good. Covers have some light shelf wear. 100% positive feedback. 30 day money back guarantee. NEXT DAY SHIPPING! Excellent customer service. Please email with any questions. All books packed carefully and ship with free delivery confirmation/tracking. All books come with free bookmarks. Ships from Sag Harbor, New York.Seller 368557 Pulp Paperbacks We Buy Books! Collections - Libraries - Estates - Individual Titles. Message us if you have books to sell!

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Velvetink · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fiction thriller. No memory of it except I know I read it. Brought home to re-read again. sometime when my list is shorter.

[Jules · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overstated cover quotes from Len Deighton aside, I don't mind the plots being bonkers but it's not credibly executed (despite all the experts they had plundered for help). Long descriptive passages must be how you write a novel because the action when it happens is in a couple of short paragraphs. Skim and you'll miss it. Sentence construction is fine and I promised myself I'd finish it (NY resolutions). The plot is predicatable and there is no surprise in the "surprise ending". I expected more. Or anything else.

Typos appear in the the final pages like the proof reader had given up. When I saw the first I knew a second was coming. I can't blame them. I agreed it might have made a decent movie in the right hands along the lines of Capricorn One. Its appeal is in the 9/11 overtones of the plot but I'd hope it would explore it less obviously and more engagingly. OK though.

[Ronald]

read some time in 1979

[J McEvoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather a splendid conspiracy thriller; in fact, you might say Wild Card is the start-point of conspiracy literature. Its plot may have appeared far-fetched in 1974, and probably remains so today; but there is an invention in its plotting that is persuasive and highly predictive. The invention lies in assembling all those elements in one place that we now take for granted as formula - for example, the recruitment, by coercion if necessary, of top scientists and engineers, at the behest of the president and his advisors, on a national security issue. The gradual betrayals. And the subsequent clean-up operations. Nothing is too cynical here, no palate too jaded for the disillusion on offer. Interestingly, the president in the novel is clearly Edward Kennedy, who of course was never elected president. From here you might want to take a look at Mario Puzo's The Fourth K, an oddball tract which fingers murdered men as future tyrants.

Wild Card is highly recommended if you enjoy knowing conspiracy thrillers. It deserves cult status at least; and the false flag operation at its centre could easily be mounted by governments today if it proved convenient to do so.

[Darren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad book, but it should really be more famous than it is, since Alan Moore swiped about half the plot of WATCHMEN from it. If you've read WATCHMEN and you read this, you'll find certain scenes from this book to be pretty obvious and irrefutable templates for similar scenes in WATCHMEN. It amazes me more people don't know this.

[Bernhard · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best thrillers ever. I loved this book and its classic plot - many future films and books seem to have copied elements from it without actually carrying through to the inevitable conclusion... to say more would be to spoil this gem of a book!

[Yvonne Lacy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devilish.