Nothing Lasts Forever

Die Hard: The Novel

Die Hard is often considered the ultimate 80s action movie. For a few years, I have searched used bookstores for the novel that the movie is based on: Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever. The first edition was a 1979 hardback, there was a Ballantine paperback from 1983, and then a movie tie-in edition from 1988.

I finally broke down and ordered the trade paperback edition from Graymalkin Media. The trade paperback is 245 pages.

The novel is a sequel to Thorp's The Detective (1966). Joe Leland is in his 60s, a WW2 fighter ace, retired cop, private detective, and current consultant. It opens with him in St. Louis attempting to get to the airport that involves a fender bender in the taxi he is in. A fair amount of space is given to the plane flight to Los Angeles with Leland striking up a friendship with a stewardess.

He is on his way to spend Christmas with his daughter and her two kids. The daughter is divorced and works for an oil company. More space is given to Leland thinking about his failed marriage, dead ex-wife, former alcoholism, ex-partners, and his daughter's L.A. lifestyle.

There are observations on characters at Claxon Oil Corporation. There is open use of cocaine at the party. The terrorists are all Germans modeled on the Red Army Faction. There is a brief mention of training inside the Iron Curtain. The leader is Anton Gruber “Little Tony the Red.” He is a true believer in the struggle. The terrorists mostly carry AK-47s and also have RPGs. Leland carries a Browning. Thorpe never mentions the model but the guess is a Hi Power, an excellent pistol.

Leland kills the first terrorist by snapping his neck. That one is carrying a Thompson sub-machine gun. He sends the body down the elevator in a chair with the note “Now I have a sub-machine gun.”

The novel is a game of cat and mouse with terrorists searching for Leland as he picks them off one by one. He gets the detonators rendering their attempt to blast open the safe useless. Gruber intends on throwing the money, around $6 million out the window to the crowds. Claxon Oil has just made a deal with the “fascist junta” of Chile for an infrastructure deal. Gruber wants to strike a blow against Chile and capitalist corporations who deal with fascists.

The crawling through the air conditioning vents is in the book as is the jumping off the roof with the fire hose and dropping explosive in the elevator shaft.

Leland pays a price for taking out the terrorists that is different from the movie. The novel's action scenes were good, the novel slowed at times with space given to Leland's past. I will say the movie is better than the book as Bruce Willis had a dash in delivery. All the exposition of Leland's past that slowed down the novel at times was gone from the movie.

The novel is very much of the late 1970s which is almost alien terrain now. Nothing says 1980s action movie like the protagonist using a Beretta M9 pistol. The U.S. Army almost went with the Sig-Sauer P226 instead of the Beretta. All those late 80s action movies would have featured Sig-Sauers had the Army not gone with Beretta.

A good novel made for a great movie. I don't regret reading Nothing Last Forever at all. Next on my list is to find the novel To Live and Die in L.A.