Marathon Man

william goldman

Tom "Babe" Levy is a runner in every sense: racing tirelessly toward his goals of athletic and academic excellence--and endlessly away from the specter of his famous father's scandal-driven suicide. But an unexpected visit from his beloved older brother will set in motion a chain of events that plunge Babe into a vortex of terror, treachery, and murder--and force him into a race for his life . . . and for the answer to the fateful question, "Is it safe?"

Genres fictionthrillermysterymystery thrillercrimeclassicssuspenseespionagenovelsadventure

236 pages, Paperback

First published April 1,1974

Series

Babe Levy

Places

edinburgh scotland, new york city new york,

This edition

Format: 236 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 1976 by Pan
ISBN: 9780330247047
ASIN: 0330247042
Language: English

Characters More characters

Henrydoc Levy

Babes brother, Henry, better known as "Doc", poses as an oil company executive but, unknown to Babe, is actually a U.S. government agent working for a secret agency headed by Director Peter Janeway. Doc is very fit and physically powerful. He is a k...
Thomas Babe Levy

Thomas Babington "Babe" Levy is a history Ph.D. candidate (at Colombia University in New York City) and avid runner researching the same field as his father, who committed suicide after being investigated during the Joseph McCarthy era.His brother is Henr...
Dr. Christian Szell

Szell is an escaped Nazi war criminal. A dentist before World War II he now lives under a false identity in South America. He is a dangerous, homicidal and paranoid. He enjoys torturing people through the use of his dentistry skills....
Peter Janeway

The head of the agency that Doc works for and Szells protector. Janeway is an amoral, ambitious and duplicitous man. more...
Elsa Opel

Elsa is an agent from Switzerland/Germany who works for the same agency as Doc. She poses as a graduate student and becomes Babes lover in order to get close to Doc and find out what Doc might be up to. more...

About the author

william goldman

Goldman grew up in a Jewish family in Highland Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, and obtained a BA degree at Oberlin College in 1952 and an MA degree at Columbia University in 1956.His brother was the late James Goldman, author and playwright.

William Goldman had published five novels and had three plays produced on Broadway before he began to write screenplays. Several of his novels he later used as the foundation for his screenplays.

In the 1980s he wrote a series of memoirs looking at his professional life on Broadway and in Hollywood (in one of these he famously remarked that "Nobody knows anything"). He then returned to writing novels. He then adapted his novel The Princess Bride to the screen, which marked his re-entry into screenwriting.

Goldman won two Academy Awards: an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay for All the President's Men. He also won two Edgar Awards, from the Mystery Writers of America, for Best Motion Picture Screenplay: for Harper in 1967, and for Magic (adapted from his own 1976 novel) in 1979.

Goldman died in New York City on November 16, 2018, due to complications from colon cancer and pneumonia. He was eighty-seven years old.