Word: pelham
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Godey...
...Taking of Pelham One Two Three, Godey...
...fast, in fact as well as fantasy. About the only vehicle left for adventure on rails is the big-city subway. It can rattle along divertingly enough, as in the famous chase sequence in the movie The French Connection. But as used in a novel like The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, the subway car as dramatic conveyance produces the sinking, shrinking feeling of a subgenre in decline. Once we roared across frontiers on the Orient Express; now we lurch along on a Lexington Avenue local...
...Pelham one two three" is New York City subway jargon for the train that sets out from the Pelham Bay Park terminal in The Bronx at 1:23 p.m. In John Godey's "What if...?" exercise, the front car of such a train is hijacked by four highly organized, submachine-gun-toting terrorists. They hold the motorman and 16 passengers hostage while their leader negotiates with the city government for a $1,000,000 ransom. The hostages do not panic; after all, they represent that well-rounded social group - a call girl, a wise old man, a black militant...
...such authentic research could not be applied to Godey's characters. His people seem little more than hollow molds waiting to be filled by some Hollywood casting director. In a way this is fitting. In print form, Pelham One Two Three is really only a short connecting ride between the scary movies that seem to have inspired it and the scary movie that it all too clearly aspires...