ファン・クラブ誘拐事件

Irving Wallace was one of the most successful popular authors of the last half of the twentieth century. His novels almost always ended up on best seller lists, and his non-fiction books were fascinating—and too, best sellers. The Fan Club was among his last works. Like its predecessors, it is a massive novel, weighing in at over five hundred pages. Wallace’s characters are as fascinating, on the surface, as ever, and his story-telling is as fine as his previous works. In this, a voluptuous sex-symbol movie star is kidnapped by four average Joes, not for ransom but for the pleasure of sex with her. They, in their naiveté, believe she will be more than willing once she sees how much they worship her. But, as anyone with half a brain would realize, she is repulsed at being held captive and being used. But she turns the tables on them subtly, and the story takes off. It is a compelling plot indeed. But because the topic of rape is so unsavory, it is hard to like any of the characters, even the movie star. Wallace, as I said, is noted for massive books. I don’t know if this was because of the topic or because it was one of his last books, but I found it extremely verbose, and I had a hard time accepting that characters would talk like he lets them. I’ve read most of his other books, and I don’t remember this style of dialogue in any of them. The characters in his other books are extremely accessible, but these four kidnappers are very hard to get to know, mainly because of the way they talk. And the police detective who eventually comes into the picture talks like some scholar explaining a scientific process, rather than a cop who wants to solve a crime efficiently and quickly. And I was totally mind-boggled by the coda. The final pages just didn’t make sense to me, as far as the actions of the movie star and one of her kidnappers. So I’m not sure I would recommend this book except to the most die-hard of Irving Wallace fans. He wrote far too many fine books to spend time on this potboiler.

Found the book very slow to get going and didn't find myself looking forward to reading

Did not enjoy the book.

I returned this item so I have no idea why it's still here.

I remember reading naughty parts of this fairly "dirty" book as a pre-pubescent kid. My mom had it on her book shelf. I mainly ordered it for nostalgic reasons to revisit some of the passages that intrigued me before I really knew anything about sex. Reading the story as an adult is a different experience. It's a relentless rape story, a male fantasy that grows tiresome and uncomfortable fairly quickly. All of the characters are fairly one-dimensional-- the cast of "fan club" rapists as well as the movie star victim. I thought this 1970s story might have a new interpretation in reading it now, with how super stars' privacy is constantly being invaded by ever-present cameras (not just by paid paparazzi but by random citizens as well) and social media, stolen nude selfies, etc. But it doesn't really.

This book was a fair read, it just wasn't what I expected. My own fault, really. I didn't know thw author, just thought I'd try someone new.

I just couldn't wait to get to the end of this book. I found myself reading faster and faster because I wanted to know what was going to happen next! I was thoroughly enjoying the story. Until I got to the ending. And even then I thought, no, the author is just playing with us. He will take the huge holes, character flaws and procedure mistakes and twist it around to a great "GOTCHA!" But no, no gotcha. Just a very poorly written ending that destroyed a good story. And there were so many great ways that the story could have been ended but alas. It was like the author got bored or just quit caring. I was so disappointed! I debated even giving this as many as 3 stars.

Pedantic and BORING. Definitely NOT one of his best. I could only force myself through 36% of this one. Usually I find this authors work riveting and entertaining. However, don't waste you time or money on this piece of junk!!!

If this book were cut in half it might have been a great read, but it took 50% of the book just to get into the meat of the story! There was so many unnecessary details that it made the story boring. Plus a lot of philosophical mumbo jumbo that was distracting from the story. If all this were left out it would have been much much better.