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Black Friday
The breathtaking suspense of Kiss the Girls and the authenticity of N.Y.P.D. Welcome to James Patterson's classic superthriller, Black Friday. A courageous federal agent, a powerful and resourceful woman lawyer - only they can possibly stop the unspeakable from happening. New York City is under siege by a secret militia group - and that's just the beginning of the relentless terror of Black Friday. I love to lose myself in a thriller — especially the rare one that moves along like an out-of-control freight train. The thriller that actually got me started writing was The Day of the Jackal.With Black Friday, I wanted to concoct a shamelessly manipulative story that the reader couldn't wait to finish, but didn't want to end. Now get on this freight train!--- James PattersonOriginally published in 1987 as Black Market, also by James Patterson.
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First published June 5, 1986
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About the author
James Patterson
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JIMMY Patterson Books
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James Patterson is the most popular storyteller of our time and the creator of such unforgettable characters and series as Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Smith, and Maximum Ride. He has coauthored #1 bestselling novels with Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, and Michael Crichton, as well as collaborated on #1 bestselling nonfiction, including The Idaho Four, Walk in My Combat Boots, and Filthy Rich. Patterson has told the story of his own life in the #1 bestselling autobiography James Patterson by James Patterson. He is the recipient of an Edgar Award, ten Emmy Awards, the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, and the National Humanities Medal.
Official UK Site
JIMMY Patterson Books
ReadKiddoRead
James Patterson is the most popular storyteller of our time and the creator of such unforgettable characters and series as Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Jane Smith, and Maximum Ride. He has coauthored #1 bestselling novels with Bill Clinton, Dolly Parton, and Michael Crichton, as well as collaborated on #1 bestselling nonfiction, including The Idaho Four, Walk in My Combat Boots, and Filthy Rich. Patterson has told the story of his own life in the #1 bestselling autobiography James Patterson by James Patterson. He is the recipient of an Edgar Award, ten Emmy Awards, the Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, and the National Humanities Medal.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 421 reviews
August 22, 2020
Black Market by James Patterson is an intriguing look at what would happen to the financial world should terrorists take out Wall Street. That was the warning from the unknown, and with the crisis looming, Archer Carroll of the FBI special services and Caitlin Dillon, brilliant and well read lawyer, along with the President of the US, CIA, FBI and many others all set about trying to find the terrorists before the crash they knew was coming actually occurred. Originally published in 1986, I found this to be a fast-paced thriller with many players – though it wasn’t hard to keep track – with plenty of twists and an unexpected ending. I'm glad to have finally read it, with it waiting on my physical bookshelf for over 8 years! Recommended.
February 22, 2025
The “Black Friday” of this 1986 suspense novel has nothing to do with post-Thanksgiving shopping – or with the Fisk-Gould financial crisis of 1869, or the 1993 bomb attack in Mumbai, or the schlocky 1940 horror film with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, or the jaunty 1975 hit single by rock band Steely Dan. Rather, it is the day on which a shadowy terrorist group launches a devastating attack against the financial district of New York City. The events that unfold from there violate various laws of physics, human behaviour, and narrative probability; but they may do much to show what has made James Patterson a singularly popular author of best-selling thrillers.
Patterson, a Manhattan College graduate and former advertising executive, is, in terms of book sales and financial remuneration, a singularly successful author. Works like his Alex Cross series, about a Washington, D.C., forensic psychologist, have sold more than 400 million copies. He has made as much as $95 million in a single year from the sale of his books. And he has been generous with the fruits of his success, donating to universities and libraries in the cause of promoting literacy.
Black Friday, as mentioned above, begins with a devastating, coordinated terrorist attack on the financial district of New York City – multiple explosions that simultaneously destroy many of the most vital centers of Wall Street operations. Vast amounts of assets are stolen, and it becomes clear that the stability of the world’s entire financial system is threatened.
The book’s main character, a federal agent named Arch Carroll, is puzzled by the way in which the group that has committed the attacks – a shadowy entity called simply “Green Band” – seems able to perpetrate such mayhem with such seamless precision. A captain from the bomb squad shows Carroll what was in a plain cardboard box that a janitor found behind a lavatory cistern:
Carroll stared at the device, at the length of shiny green ribbon that was wound elaborately around it. Green Band.
“It’s harmless,” Nicolo said. “It was never meant to go off, Arch.”
Arch Carroll continued to stare at the makings of a professional terrorist’s bomb. It was never meant to go off, he thought. Another warning?
“They could have totalled this place,” Carroll said with a sick feeling.
Nicolo made a clucking sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Easily,” he said. “Plastique, like all the others. Whoever did it knew what the hell he was up to, Arch.” (pp. 101-02)
It emerges that “Green Band” is an organization of Vietnam War veterans, commanded by a former U.S. Army colonel named David Hudson, and operating under the cover of an all-veterans taxicab company. Hudson and his fellow veterans share the scars of that war – Hudson lost an arm in Vietnam, and survived physical and psychological torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp – and it becomes clear that a large part of their motivation for the Green Band attacks is their feeling of having been betrayed by the country that they love and have fought for.
All of these elements of Black Friday put me back in the mid-1980’s venue in which this book was written, with its original title of Black Market. In that time, there was a great deal of concern about Vietnam veterans as a potentially embittered group of men scarred by their participation in a brutal and lost war, and by the sometimes-harsh reception they experienced from civilians at home.
Consider, in that regard, works like the 1972 David Morrell novel First Blood and the five (so far) Rambo films that it inspired; or the 1975 Thomas Harris novel Black Sunday and its 1977 film adaptation by John Frankenheimer; or Richard Rush’s 1980 film The Stunt Man. All of these works share with Patterson’s Black Friday that concern about the Vietnam veteran being, supposedly, a sort of “loose cannon” whose fragile psyche might break out into violent behaviour.
It was a frequently expressed anxiety of those times – not “What have we done to those veterans?”, but rather “What might those veterans do to us?” Such stereotyping is a sad thing to reflect upon, and it speaks to the difficulty that U.S. society faced in trying to cope with the legacy of the Vietnam War.
In the case of Patterson’s Black Friday, Colonel David Hudson, whose code name in Green Band is “Vets One,” orchestrates the steps of the Green Band operation with military precision that commands the loyalty and respect of his men:
Vets One had purposely modeled his presentation after the concise and technical Special Forces field briefings. He wanted the men to vividly remember Viet Nam now. He wanted them to remember how they’d acted: with daring and courage, with dedication to the United States….For nearly two and a half hours, Hudson painstakingly reviewed every scenario, every likely and even unlikely change that might occur up to and including the end of the Green Band mission. He used memory aids: reconnaissance topographical maps, mnemonics for memorizing, Army-style organization charts. (p. 109)
In his investigation of the Green Band conspiracy, Arch Carroll works with a brilliant and beautiful Wall Street lawyer named Caitlin Dillon. When I read the book’s initial description of Caitlin as possessed of a cool, inaccessible beauty, I started to develop a hunch that she and Arch Carroll might become romantically involved. And then, a few dozen pages later, Caitlin showed up at Arch Carroll’s apartment, needing to talk, in the middle of the night. I’m not sure how often, in real life, a beautiful woman suddenly shows up at a single man’s apartment in the middle of the night, needing to talk; but I know that things often go that way in suspense novels. Or maybe it was just the point in the book at which a tasteful, not-too-explicit three-page love scene needed to occur.
The international reach of the Green Band conspiracy is seen at Shannon Airport in Ireland, when one Thomas X. O’Neil, the chief of U.S. Customs at the airport, lets three boxes from a New York-based flight go through customs on their way up to Belfast. Once O’Neil clears the three boxes for their trip up to Northern Ireland, he “laughed for no apparent reason….And why not? Had he not just succeeded in getting one billion four worth of freshly stolen stock certificates into Western Europe?” It turns out, after all, that before going into his career in U.S. Customs, O’Neil “had been a master sergeant in general supply in Viet Nam”, and that “He was also Vets 28” (p. 208).
This Irish dimension of Black Friday leads to a scene in which Caitlin Dillon travels from New York to Belfast for a dangerous meeting with Irish Republican Army agents. I’m not sure why this scene was necessary, except perhaps that the Northern Ireland conflict and the IRA were much in the news in the mid-1980’s when the book was written.
The passages of Black Market that I found more plausible were those that related to sound police work. At one point, Arch Carroll is conducting research at FBI headquarters, not really expecting to find anything, but doggedly pursuing his investigation nonetheless:
Carroll sat down. He still expected to come away from Washington empty-handed. He expected that the faint sense of anticipation he felt would now turn out to be nothing more than a false alarm. Five men on the FBI computer list of “subversives” – a term he knew was next to meaningless, at least the way the FBI used it.
He checked his own printouts, and his heart suddenly clutched.
Barreiro and Doud had been explosives experts.
And David Hudson had been a colonel, who, according to the brief note on the printout, had been active in the organization of veterans’ groups and veterans’ rights after Viet Nam.
Five men who had served together in the war.
Five men who were on both his list, and the FBI’s….
[Carroll] began to read about Colonel Hudson. (p. 309)
One of the things I’ve learned to expect from suspense novels is late-in-the-game betrayal, when a character the reader has been invited to trust turns out to be on the side of the bad guys. One certainly gets that in Black Friday, particularly in connection with a terrorist named Francois Monserrat who has worked with Green Band but has his own agenda. One particular betrayal, near the end of the novel, really throws Arch Carroll for a loop during a climactic scene of violent confrontation:
Carroll’s world wheeled violently and turned on its side. Whatever sense of reality he had left, shattered. He closed his eyes. He raked one hand over his smoke-blackened face. His mind’s eye seemed to flood with exploding light….It was the worst hurt, the worst betrayal of his life. (p. 405)
I found that Black Friday was longer than it needed to be – a 438-page novel with a better 250-page novel hiding somewhere inside it. I found some of the plot twists and turns of the book to be somewhat predictable, but some of that may have to do with what one learns to expect from the suspense genre. I don’t think I’ll be returning to the work of James Patterson; but considering that a James Patterson novel represents, by one estimate, one out of every seventeen novels sold in the United States, I’m sure Mr. Patterson will be doing fine nonetheless. And I do appreciate all he’s doing to contribute to universities and libraries: heaven knows they need that sort of help these days.
Patterson, a Manhattan College graduate and former advertising executive, is, in terms of book sales and financial remuneration, a singularly successful author. Works like his Alex Cross series, about a Washington, D.C., forensic psychologist, have sold more than 400 million copies. He has made as much as $95 million in a single year from the sale of his books. And he has been generous with the fruits of his success, donating to universities and libraries in the cause of promoting literacy.
Black Friday, as mentioned above, begins with a devastating, coordinated terrorist attack on the financial district of New York City – multiple explosions that simultaneously destroy many of the most vital centers of Wall Street operations. Vast amounts of assets are stolen, and it becomes clear that the stability of the world’s entire financial system is threatened.
The book’s main character, a federal agent named Arch Carroll, is puzzled by the way in which the group that has committed the attacks – a shadowy entity called simply “Green Band” – seems able to perpetrate such mayhem with such seamless precision. A captain from the bomb squad shows Carroll what was in a plain cardboard box that a janitor found behind a lavatory cistern:
Carroll stared at the device, at the length of shiny green ribbon that was wound elaborately around it. Green Band.
“It’s harmless,” Nicolo said. “It was never meant to go off, Arch.”
Arch Carroll continued to stare at the makings of a professional terrorist’s bomb. It was never meant to go off, he thought. Another warning?
“They could have totalled this place,” Carroll said with a sick feeling.
Nicolo made a clucking sound with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. “Easily,” he said. “Plastique, like all the others. Whoever did it knew what the hell he was up to, Arch.” (pp. 101-02)
It emerges that “Green Band” is an organization of Vietnam War veterans, commanded by a former U.S. Army colonel named David Hudson, and operating under the cover of an all-veterans taxicab company. Hudson and his fellow veterans share the scars of that war – Hudson lost an arm in Vietnam, and survived physical and psychological torture in a North Vietnamese prison camp – and it becomes clear that a large part of their motivation for the Green Band attacks is their feeling of having been betrayed by the country that they love and have fought for.
All of these elements of Black Friday put me back in the mid-1980’s venue in which this book was written, with its original title of Black Market. In that time, there was a great deal of concern about Vietnam veterans as a potentially embittered group of men scarred by their participation in a brutal and lost war, and by the sometimes-harsh reception they experienced from civilians at home.
Consider, in that regard, works like the 1972 David Morrell novel First Blood and the five (so far) Rambo films that it inspired; or the 1975 Thomas Harris novel Black Sunday and its 1977 film adaptation by John Frankenheimer; or Richard Rush’s 1980 film The Stunt Man. All of these works share with Patterson’s Black Friday that concern about the Vietnam veteran being, supposedly, a sort of “loose cannon” whose fragile psyche might break out into violent behaviour.
It was a frequently expressed anxiety of those times – not “What have we done to those veterans?”, but rather “What might those veterans do to us?” Such stereotyping is a sad thing to reflect upon, and it speaks to the difficulty that U.S. society faced in trying to cope with the legacy of the Vietnam War.
In the case of Patterson’s Black Friday, Colonel David Hudson, whose code name in Green Band is “Vets One,” orchestrates the steps of the Green Band operation with military precision that commands the loyalty and respect of his men:
Vets One had purposely modeled his presentation after the concise and technical Special Forces field briefings. He wanted the men to vividly remember Viet Nam now. He wanted them to remember how they’d acted: with daring and courage, with dedication to the United States….For nearly two and a half hours, Hudson painstakingly reviewed every scenario, every likely and even unlikely change that might occur up to and including the end of the Green Band mission. He used memory aids: reconnaissance topographical maps, mnemonics for memorizing, Army-style organization charts. (p. 109)
In his investigation of the Green Band conspiracy, Arch Carroll works with a brilliant and beautiful Wall Street lawyer named Caitlin Dillon. When I read the book’s initial description of Caitlin as possessed of a cool, inaccessible beauty, I started to develop a hunch that she and Arch Carroll might become romantically involved. And then, a few dozen pages later, Caitlin showed up at Arch Carroll’s apartment, needing to talk, in the middle of the night. I’m not sure how often, in real life, a beautiful woman suddenly shows up at a single man’s apartment in the middle of the night, needing to talk; but I know that things often go that way in suspense novels. Or maybe it was just the point in the book at which a tasteful, not-too-explicit three-page love scene needed to occur.
The international reach of the Green Band conspiracy is seen at Shannon Airport in Ireland, when one Thomas X. O’Neil, the chief of U.S. Customs at the airport, lets three boxes from a New York-based flight go through customs on their way up to Belfast. Once O’Neil clears the three boxes for their trip up to Northern Ireland, he “laughed for no apparent reason….And why not? Had he not just succeeded in getting one billion four worth of freshly stolen stock certificates into Western Europe?” It turns out, after all, that before going into his career in U.S. Customs, O’Neil “had been a master sergeant in general supply in Viet Nam”, and that “He was also Vets 28” (p. 208).
This Irish dimension of Black Friday leads to a scene in which Caitlin Dillon travels from New York to Belfast for a dangerous meeting with Irish Republican Army agents. I’m not sure why this scene was necessary, except perhaps that the Northern Ireland conflict and the IRA were much in the news in the mid-1980’s when the book was written.
The passages of Black Market that I found more plausible were those that related to sound police work. At one point, Arch Carroll is conducting research at FBI headquarters, not really expecting to find anything, but doggedly pursuing his investigation nonetheless:
Carroll sat down. He still expected to come away from Washington empty-handed. He expected that the faint sense of anticipation he felt would now turn out to be nothing more than a false alarm. Five men on the FBI computer list of “subversives” – a term he knew was next to meaningless, at least the way the FBI used it.
He checked his own printouts, and his heart suddenly clutched.
Barreiro and Doud had been explosives experts.
And David Hudson had been a colonel, who, according to the brief note on the printout, had been active in the organization of veterans’ groups and veterans’ rights after Viet Nam.
Five men who had served together in the war.
Five men who were on both his list, and the FBI’s….
[Carroll] began to read about Colonel Hudson. (p. 309)
One of the things I’ve learned to expect from suspense novels is late-in-the-game betrayal, when a character the reader has been invited to trust turns out to be on the side of the bad guys. One certainly gets that in Black Friday, particularly in connection with a terrorist named Francois Monserrat who has worked with Green Band but has his own agenda. One particular betrayal, near the end of the novel, really throws Arch Carroll for a loop during a climactic scene of violent confrontation:
Carroll’s world wheeled violently and turned on its side. Whatever sense of reality he had left, shattered. He closed his eyes. He raked one hand over his smoke-blackened face. His mind’s eye seemed to flood with exploding light….It was the worst hurt, the worst betrayal of his life. (p. 405)
I found that Black Friday was longer than it needed to be – a 438-page novel with a better 250-page novel hiding somewhere inside it. I found some of the plot twists and turns of the book to be somewhat predictable, but some of that may have to do with what one learns to expect from the suspense genre. I don’t think I’ll be returning to the work of James Patterson; but considering that a James Patterson novel represents, by one estimate, one out of every seventeen novels sold in the United States, I’m sure Mr. Patterson will be doing fine nonetheless. And I do appreciate all he’s doing to contribute to universities and libraries: heaven knows they need that sort of help these days.
March 13, 2021
The actual plot is excellent but the story around a crash on Wall Street led by a one armed ex soldier with explosions, terrorism and a love story is too unbelievable. The dialogue is ridiculous and Carroll is a template for the later Michael Bennett series except with more children. Overall the actual plot was good but too farfetched and the characters were cliches with a silly ending.
Read
July 3, 2010I’ve read a lot of James Patterson’s newer novels and decided to start reading some of his earlier ones. This one was published in 1985 which made it a rather eerie book to read due to the subject matter.
1. It deals with a crash of Wall Street aided by the greed of the wealthy and the big banks.
2. It deals with terrorism long before we were introduced to Timothy McVey and Osama Bin Laden
3. It deals with disenchanted veterans of the Viet Nam war suffering from PTSD.
It just seems like James Patterson was in tune with these events long before they became part of our everyday lives. Creepy.
1. It deals with a crash of Wall Street aided by the greed of the wealthy and the big banks.
2. It deals with terrorism long before we were introduced to Timothy McVey and Osama Bin Laden
3. It deals with disenchanted veterans of the Viet Nam war suffering from PTSD.
It just seems like James Patterson was in tune with these events long before they became part of our everyday lives. Creepy.
February 15, 2015
BLACK FRIDAY has a pretty good story concept, but the execution is just awful, making it the dumbest smart thriller I've ever read. Imagine THE DAY OF THE JACKAL if it had been written by the author of FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY, and you'll have some idea of what I mean. The dialog is trash, the characters are B-movie stereotypes, the action is ridiculous, and everything that happens is taken to silly, unbelievable extremes in a constant attempt to artificially raise the stakes. The book is so desperate to be the most adrenaline-charged novel of the '80s that any degree of depth or emotional resonance gets left by the wayside.
Regular Patterson readers will note that the main character, Arch Carroll, shares a good many characteristics with series-regular Michael Bennett, and there's even a Mary Katherine around to take care of his kids.
As bad as it is, BLACK FRIDAY could have been worse. The frantic pacing keeps things from getting TOO boring, and the plot has enough potential that I can't help but wish it had been entrusted to a more gifted author.
Regular Patterson readers will note that the main character, Arch Carroll, shares a good many characteristics with series-regular Michael Bennett, and there's even a Mary Katherine around to take care of his kids.
As bad as it is, BLACK FRIDAY could have been worse. The frantic pacing keeps things from getting TOO boring, and the plot has enough potential that I can't help but wish it had been entrusted to a more gifted author.
March 22, 2019
I really love James Patterson. I feel this book was very hard to keep my interest. I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t want to just give up because there was one other book that I read a few years back from James Patterson that was hard to keep my interest as well, it it got better towards the end. This book not so much. It took me forever to read it because of this. No matter if this one book couldn’t my interest, James Patterson is still my favorite author.
July 4, 2017
Quite an intelligent book to understand and follow, not my favourite from James Patterson, but his die hard fans should love it.
October 5, 2022
I had a lot of trouble getting through this book. It is possible that the subject matter of Wall Street was complex and uninteresting, but it is also possible that it wasn't. Although I adore reading James Patterson's books, this one proved to be quite difficult. This is a book that I forced myself to finish, but not because I was enjoying reading it. I could not help but keep hoping that things would turn out better, but alas, they didn't. The James Patterson that I am familiar with and adore was not there in this work. The kindle version was particularly difficult to understand due to the fact that it contained a great number of typos.
June 28, 2012
This Patterson crime-suspense novel from the late eighties is an interesting read today from our perspective in the next century. The plot of a terrorist attack on New York City and the crash of the stock market and hence the world economy somehow seemed much more apocalyptic thirty years ago than it does today---probably because it all happened and we lived through it. Not in the same way of course, or in the same order and not by the same enemy and with a totally different outcome---somehow a secret government cabal in the computer age seems even more difficult to buy---but many of the things he imagined have taken place. The world has suffered, people have lost their lives and many other dangerous events undoubtedly lie ahead but we have stumbled along and survived. I guess that shows that mankind always looks into the abyss of change and shudders but predicting the outcome is a challenge. I recently saw a cartoon of a robed man standing on a street corner holding a sign with the cliché citation “The End Is Near”. He was happily explaining to passers-by that it was his fifteenth anniversary on that corner. I guess that says it all.
June 16, 2015
Follows the formula, strong start descends rapidly into drivel. Hero is a single father with a dead wife a la Alex Cross, vying with a criminal mastermind a la...Another cringeworthy love scene transacted days after the hero was shot... Appalling dialogue and general writing. And ridiculous scenarios, not least of which is the British secret service cruising around the Falls Road stronghold of Belfast looking for IRA terrorists - in a Bentley. I want whatever Patterson is smoking as it provides a complete existence outside of real life.
April 21, 2024
My first DNF of the year, I've tried daily with it but this one just isn't my cup of tea!
February 13, 2017
25 pages into it and could not get into it. Stopped reading
March 13, 2022
A muddled first half finally gives way to a more standard Patterson thriller in the second. This isn't anything too special but as one of his earlier books, it gives the reader the template for many of his later novels.
November 23, 2022
Like always a good Patterson read, just not as suspenseful a read as I had hoped
January 18, 2019
This is my second James Patterson book, and compared to 'The Midnight Club', it is definitely inferior. The suspense goes on for far too long, the reader is constantly being reminded of both it and the fact that we know nothing about the antagonists, and the main character is always tired. The invariability of descriptions becomes tiring after a while, and the romance subplot is completely expected and predictable from the blurb at the back of the book. Else, there is a huge political plot to turn America's fortunes around, endless secret organisations one inside the other, and enough mystery for a book three times the size of this one. An easy read when there is nothing else to read, but not a very light one, and not a very well-written one, either.
September 6, 2009
A story of deception, secret government sects, global terrorism, Vie-veteran guerrilla, bomb threats on Wall Street...set in the middle of Cold War.
Cut the length in half and you might get a decent thriller. But as it is, the pace was too slow, the twists and turns too convoluted, the characters were a bit too one-dimensional for my taste...I'm just not convinced.
Great premise, poor execution. Sad, but true.
Cut the length in half and you might get a decent thriller. But as it is, the pace was too slow, the twists and turns too convoluted, the characters were a bit too one-dimensional for my taste...I'm just not convinced.
Great premise, poor execution. Sad, but true.
June 12, 2010
It's funny, although this book is...how old? 24-ish years old, it quite scarily reminded me about things happening today... Very good story though, and I thought I had it all worked out at the end, but I was way off the mark! That's what I like to see...a book that keeps me guessing right to the end, and then proves me wrong on every level!
July 22, 2020
It could be a scenario for an action thriller movie with a happy ending.
The main characters are very typical characters, nothing special. Usual roles and actions, when a brave policeman falls in love with a pretty and intelligent woman...so nothing new.
It was very easy to predict the end of the story.
Not surprising.
The main characters are very typical characters, nothing special. Usual roles and actions, when a brave policeman falls in love with a pretty and intelligent woman...so nothing new.
It was very easy to predict the end of the story.
Not surprising.
June 18, 2015
couldnt get into it, which is weird for a patterson novel. I dont care much for stocks and whatnot, so i stopped reading and switched back to mystery/thriller
Read
March 3, 2023DNF
May 21, 2017
I liked the economic warfare concept and the fast pace. I liked learning about a potential scenario of risk and physical threats to the stock market.
That being said, although terror attacks against Wall Street are depicted in this book, that's not really what this novel is about. I wouldn't call this a financial thriller or a terrorism thriller. It's more of a post-Vietnam thriller. It includes endless and somewhat shallow commentary on the mistreatment of vets after they came home from Vietnam. The book portrays a significant number of vets as PTSD victims who can't fit in to regular society. This is most personified by the antagonist of the story, Colonel David Hudson. He is a Rambo type figure but relies more on brains and leadership ability than on brawn. I got the feeling that the reader is supposed to sympathize with Hudson because he's a patriot who was exploited by his country, but I can't connect with a terrorist mastermind. The Vietnam vet social commentary was well-intentioned but didn't quite work for me.
The character I did like was the law enforcement hero, Arch Carroll. He came across as a good, meat & potatoes kind of guy.
That being said, although terror attacks against Wall Street are depicted in this book, that's not really what this novel is about. I wouldn't call this a financial thriller or a terrorism thriller. It's more of a post-Vietnam thriller. It includes endless and somewhat shallow commentary on the mistreatment of vets after they came home from Vietnam. The book portrays a significant number of vets as PTSD victims who can't fit in to regular society. This is most personified by the antagonist of the story, Colonel David Hudson. He is a Rambo type figure but relies more on brains and leadership ability than on brawn. I got the feeling that the reader is supposed to sympathize with Hudson because he's a patriot who was exploited by his country, but I can't connect with a terrorist mastermind. The Vietnam vet social commentary was well-intentioned but didn't quite work for me.
The character I did like was the law enforcement hero, Arch Carroll. He came across as a good, meat & potatoes kind of guy.
May 29, 2017
Originally published in 1986 this is a tale of a Federal terrorist agent and the fight by combined agencies in an effort to track down the "Green Band", a mysterious group that is out to destroy the financial markets in the US by bombing selected targets on Wall Street. They make no demands, but continue to wreck havoc on the financial institutions which begins to affect the world monetary system. Often following clues that turn out to be red herrings the agencies reach panic mode before some breaks occur, but they are also dealing with a Russian assassin/terrorist now as well and thins get worse before the they get better. This is a read filled with action, twists and an all around good read.
August 4, 2020
This book is about disenchanted veterans of the Vietnam war and how they destroy the financial markets in the US. He has highlighted the plight of veterans who return home with PTSD very well.
It was a quick read, with decent action and entertaining.
A total masala of romance, action and suspense.
It was a quick read, with decent action and entertaining.
A total masala of romance, action and suspense.
July 7, 2017
wtf just happened?
an end to the deception, indeed
well, this deception, at least
p148: 5 international business -- 23.219,000,000
p199: carroll slowly sipped fresh-brewed coffee from a cracked revenge of the jedi mug.
p243: 'oh, i mink this will do me pretty well. ..."
an end to the deception, indeed
well, this deception, at least
p148: 5 international business -- 23.219,000,000
p199: carroll slowly sipped fresh-brewed coffee from a cracked revenge of the jedi mug.
p243: 'oh, i mink this will do me pretty well. ..."
June 13, 2022
What a choppy, convoluted mess!!
August 7, 2025
James Patterson does not disappoint.
February 22, 2020
This is one of the few books by James Patterson that was not a quick read for me. It moved very slowly for 2/3s of the book. So slowly in fact that it took me over a year to finish the book. I am usually a huge fan of Patterson's, but I was not a fan of this book. The last third of the book moved at a normal Patterson pace and was enjoyable, but if you are a person who doesn't want to finish a book that doesn't hook you immediately, then I don't recommend this book for you.
February 17, 2009
Originally published in 1987 as Black Market, this book brings readers back in time when the world was still swayed by the Cold War and a lot of today's international issues are different. The book starts with a thread (and the follow through) by terrorists under the name Green Band promising to blow up the buildings that make up the economic entity that is Wall Street at the close of the day on a Friday afternoon. As you can expect, this causes a bit of havoc on the markets in America and around the world.
The government has brought in Arch Carroll, the head of the anti-terrorism division at the CIA, and Caitlin Dylan, the SEC's Director of Enforcement, along with other government officials are brought together to sort out whom Green Band is and bring stability to both the markets and prevent further attacks. As you can guess, their partnerships ends up being more than a professional one as they travel around the world working with agents from France, Ireland and Britain, and other locations that are tied with leads they find.
Eventually, Arch and Caitlin find a lead that tracks to one former-Colonel David Hudson, a disgruntled Vietnam Vet leading a band of others like him. Hudson is clearly tied to the center of Green Band and nabbing him will likely allow Arch and Caitlin to solve the case.
The problem is that while Hudson and his team are involved, there is a lot more to Green Band than anyone can imagine. In fact, the true source of the plot to strike at Wall Street is a complete surprise that will shock even the most deductive reader.
This, like many of Patterson's early books, is stronger than most of the schlock he is cracking out today. Granted, it's age makes it a bit "behind the times" with the technology and computing that is at the core of today's stock market trading, it is still filled with action, intrigue, and conspiracy that will appeal to most fans of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.
The government has brought in Arch Carroll, the head of the anti-terrorism division at the CIA, and Caitlin Dylan, the SEC's Director of Enforcement, along with other government officials are brought together to sort out whom Green Band is and bring stability to both the markets and prevent further attacks. As you can guess, their partnerships ends up being more than a professional one as they travel around the world working with agents from France, Ireland and Britain, and other locations that are tied with leads they find.
Eventually, Arch and Caitlin find a lead that tracks to one former-Colonel David Hudson, a disgruntled Vietnam Vet leading a band of others like him. Hudson is clearly tied to the center of Green Band and nabbing him will likely allow Arch and Caitlin to solve the case.
The problem is that while Hudson and his team are involved, there is a lot more to Green Band than anyone can imagine. In fact, the true source of the plot to strike at Wall Street is a complete surprise that will shock even the most deductive reader.
This, like many of Patterson's early books, is stronger than most of the schlock he is cracking out today. Granted, it's age makes it a bit "behind the times" with the technology and computing that is at the core of today's stock market trading, it is still filled with action, intrigue, and conspiracy that will appeal to most fans of Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.
November 9, 2012
This book is one of the finer ones i have read in a long time. I am not an avid reader nor do i like reading, but this book was very interesting. There's tons of action and not alot of romance in the life of arch carrol. He is the main character of the book, one of the best detectives in new york, a loving father, brother, and a widow. He was married to nora carrol for 9 years before she tragically died of cancer in a hosiptal bed. He now raises his 3 kids with his sister, mary, and she watches the kids while hes at work. In the book, arch takes on his most challenging case yet: the bombing of the world trade center. It happened so suddenly that everyone one was in a panic, it was a new black friday. Arch carrol, working with D.I.A, the president and the the secret service, to capture the culprits of this bombing. Shorty before the bombing, the president was contacted by a group known as "green band" who after the bombings, never came back into contact. Arch and the team travel country to country tracking down the members of "green band". Each city he goes to, more people die. At the end, he captures colonal hudson, a vietnam veteran, who tells him everything. "Green band" was a team of disabled veterans working for a cab company called "vets cab company" and they felt betrayed by the country they fought for. Arch settles down with co-work/friend of his named catlin dillon, and they raised a happy family together. But all the while, a drug lord watches over him. I wish it continued on that but the story just ends. Bummer. Can't wait to read the next book!
December 3, 2011
Black Friday is one of James Patterson's earlier works. NYC is under siege by a secret militia group calling itself Green Band. The stock market is thrown into chaos when Green Band blows up several Wall Street institutions, essentially creating an economic world war.
The entire first half of the book was unbearable. My lack of interest in Wall Street and anything to do with the Stock Market just made a large portion of the book hard to understand and follow. About half ways through, when it was discovered who Green Band was, the book began to pick up pace. The biggest part that was confusing to me was, how did they figure out who Green Band was? The huge discovery that led them to the "bad guys" literally came out of no where. The first half of the book they are searching left and right for any potential leads without finding any. Then suddenly, with seemingly no clues, they are on the right track (which, I must say, has nothing to do with the ideas they were looking at during the first half of the book).
That being said, the ending was great. A couple of carefully placed twists and turns made the last half of the book well worth the read. The first half of the book gets 1 star, while the last half of the book gets 5 stars. There was too much stock market details for my taste and too little of a transition into how they got on the right track.
The entire first half of the book was unbearable. My lack of interest in Wall Street and anything to do with the Stock Market just made a large portion of the book hard to understand and follow. About half ways through, when it was discovered who Green Band was, the book began to pick up pace. The biggest part that was confusing to me was, how did they figure out who Green Band was? The huge discovery that led them to the "bad guys" literally came out of no where. The first half of the book they are searching left and right for any potential leads without finding any. Then suddenly, with seemingly no clues, they are on the right track (which, I must say, has nothing to do with the ideas they were looking at during the first half of the book).
That being said, the ending was great. A couple of carefully placed twists and turns made the last half of the book well worth the read. The first half of the book gets 1 star, while the last half of the book gets 5 stars. There was too much stock market details for my taste and too little of a transition into how they got on the right track.
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