- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Random House; 1 edition (April 20 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400067634
- ISBN-13: 978-1400067633
- Product Dimensions: 14.5 x 2.3 x 21.6 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #522,232 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Many of Lehrer’s 19 previous novels showcased his abiding love for simpler times: mid-twentieth-century America, the small-town Midwest, and the intercity bus lines of that time and region. This time out, he focuses his attention on the Super Chief, the luxurious Sante Fe Railroad train that carried the rich and famous from Chicago to Los Angeles in just over 39 hours. Set in 1956, the tale involves three mysterious deaths, former president Harry Truman, actor Clark Gable, a movie producer whose last picture flopped, and a callow, movie-loving Sante Fe passenger agent. It’s Lehrer in typically fine form: wonderful detail about railroad operations and life on the Super; small prairie towns that owed their existence to the Sante Fe; Hollywood’s worries about television; rail’s apparent lack of worry about airlines; gossip about Gable’s prodigious womanizing; and concerns about radiation from nuclear tests in Nevada. Remarkably, however, the book’s central events are true, as Lehrer testifies in an epilogue. Lehrer is a national treasure, and Super is, well . . . super." —Booklist
Product Description
In the tradition of Murder on the Orient Express, Jim Lehrer brings together a cast of characters as fascinating as the historic train that will carry them from Chicago to Los Angeles. In its heyday, the Santa Fe railroad’s famous Super Chief was so replete with wealth and celebrity that it became known as “The Train of the Stars.” And so we find it in April of 1956, embarking from the Windy City for its trip across the Plains to the West Coast.
Climbing aboard is an amazing spectrum of passengers. There’s Darwin Rinehart, a once great Hollywood producer whose most recent movie was a total flop and who now faces bankruptcy and shame. In a dark recess of a train car hides a mysterious, disheveled, sickly man who has not paid for a ticket, smuggled inside by an unscrupulous porter. Millionaire Otto Wheeler arrives in a wheelchair; deathly ill, he knows that this will be his last trip on the great train. Clark Gable causes a stir when he steps aboard, and though he’s ridden these rails for years, indulging in booze and women with equal fervor, those around him sense that this time, something is different. And finally there’s former President Harry Truman, distinguished, congenial, and constantly accompanied, for his protection, by a railroad detective.
As the Super Chief pulls out of Dearborn Station, the passengers—famous and infamous, anonymous and enigmatic—can’t possibly imagine what lies ahead. For as the train gains speed, a series of deadly events unfolds.
Full of remarkable detail and passion for a lost world of opulence and all its intrigue and delights, Jim Lehrer’s Super spins a complex web of suspense. The twists and turns will keep readers turning the pages at top speed to finish one of the most captivating stories of Lehrer’s prolific career.
Climbing aboard is an amazing spectrum of passengers. There’s Darwin Rinehart, a once great Hollywood producer whose most recent movie was a total flop and who now faces bankruptcy and shame. In a dark recess of a train car hides a mysterious, disheveled, sickly man who has not paid for a ticket, smuggled inside by an unscrupulous porter. Millionaire Otto Wheeler arrives in a wheelchair; deathly ill, he knows that this will be his last trip on the great train. Clark Gable causes a stir when he steps aboard, and though he’s ridden these rails for years, indulging in booze and women with equal fervor, those around him sense that this time, something is different. And finally there’s former President Harry Truman, distinguished, congenial, and constantly accompanied, for his protection, by a railroad detective.
As the Super Chief pulls out of Dearborn Station, the passengers—famous and infamous, anonymous and enigmatic—can’t possibly imagine what lies ahead. For as the train gains speed, a series of deadly events unfolds.
Full of remarkable detail and passion for a lost world of opulence and all its intrigue and delights, Jim Lehrer’s Super spins a complex web of suspense. The twists and turns will keep readers turning the pages at top speed to finish one of the most captivating stories of Lehrer’s prolific career.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.2 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Effortless book, easy read, leaves little trace, May 27 2010
By Alan A. Elsner "Alan Elsner, author" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Super: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book takes place in ther 1950s in the dying days of the great transcontinental railroads about to be supplanted by air travel when it took 39 hours to make the trip from Chicago to Los Angeles.
Mr. Lehrer takes us aboard one of these luxury trains for a trip in which three people will lose their lives in different ways and for different reasons. The cast of characters includes historical figures like former President Harry S. Truman and Clark Gable as well as fictional creations.
The best thing about the book is the period recreation. We meet Ralph, the solicitous conductor who for a generous tip will arrange his passangers' beds, serve their meals and, in the case of Gable, bring a succession of "fair visitors" to the film star's compartment to be bedded and discarded.
Other characters appear but are not tremendously vivid or memorable.
It's a pleasant trip that Mr. Lehrer takes us on but no more than that. One has a sense of an experienced author going through his paces, not stretching himself, taking no artistic risks, delivering a smooth product that slips down easily and leaves almost no trace. It's very professional -- but a bit too perfunctory.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Super Chief and the Ties that Grind., May 18 2010
By G. Gregory Boyd "The Vulgar Viscount" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Super: A Novel (Hardcover)
Jim Lehrer's laconic style which has served him to great effect during an almost four decade career at the helm of the Newshour is employed to perfection in his latest novel "Super." This book is about states of mind, union, and boundaries both legal and personal that separate people and create barriers. The seemingly indefatigable Lehrer, he has been averaging nearly a novel per year since 1988, places kings, Clark Gable and former President Harry Truman, queens, Claudette Colbert and Grace Dodsworth, and all those in between and provides them with just enough rope to tie themselves together and a few indiscretions to tear them apart. Life in the monochromatic 50s was anything but and the pace while far from hurried allowed people to become much more intimate and connected on an emotional level. Today it would be inconceivable for an ex-president to use a public bathroom in peace let alone board a train unassisted by hordes of seconds. The passengers embarked in Chicago and arrived in the land of dreams, Los Angeles, with only the memory of their conversations and their interactions recorded in their minds not on their Blackberrys or Twitter. What happened somewhere on the rolling plains of Kansas stayed on the plains of Kansas. The concentric circles of life, death, and lust evaporated in the American night. So sit back and relax and make sure you have your ticket and if your wife goes missing don't go looking because frankly my dear, I'm not certain Mr. Gable gives a damn. In this novel, bombs are going off everywhere and in Lehrer's world we're all bound to get a little bit of the emotional fallout on us sooner or later.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Super by Jim Leher, July 20 2010
By Richard Rutkowitz - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Super: A Novel (Hardcover)
A pleasant summer read. I was taken back to a time when most people, who traveled any distance, always went by rail. Inserting famous people such as Clark Gable and Harry Truman in a murder mystery on the Super Chief from Chicago to LA in 1956 added a sense of reality to the story.
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