Primal Fear Books

I have never written a review of a book before, but I was reading a review of another book I had just read and the author of that review said if you want to read a true legal thriller you need to read this book. I could not find it in the bookstores so I ordered it via amazon.com.

I thought the book started out kind of slow and I did not care for the use of the "F" word a few times at the beginning. I like to recommend books to my mother in law and that might stop me from recommending this one, but maybe not. Once I got into the book there was not an excessive amount of profanity and I could not put the book down.

I really like John Grisham books and this one ranks up there with Grisham's best. I highly recommended it if you have not read it already.

This was a marvelous read. Fast, frenetic--- keeps you on your toes. I would recommend this to my friends who love thrillers.

William Diehl, Primal Fear (Villard, 1993)

As I continued on through this book, discovering its many flaws, I wondered more than once if the reason I kept reading it was, at least in part, my extreme regard for Gregory Hoblit's amazing film adaptation. It's one of those rare cases (Psycho and Silence of the Lambs are the most obvious examples) where a director took a mediocre novel and really made it his own, with the resulting movie being better than the book could have ever hoped. And yet, a day after I started reading Primal Fear, I was three hundred pages into it.

There's a difference between an author who can write and a book that's well-written. I've been thinking about this over the past few days. I think the distinction, ultimately, derives from what's important to the author. A well-written book is in love with language. It is painstakingly checked for errors, each word has been chosen with care (there are some books, such as Wendy Walker's The Secret Service, where I've actually wondered, idly, how much time the author spent considering the placement of each "the"), the book was written with an eye to the overall beauty and mellifluousness of the words just as much as to plot, characterization, pacing, all that sort of thing. But a book does not have to be well-written to show evidence that an author can write. (When reading this, imagine emphasis on the word "write," in kind of the same way you might say, "dude... that guy can drink", after the guy next to you at the bar has just put back his fifteenth shot of Yukon Jack and shows no signs of disorientation.) It is possible to have cultivated a fantastic feel for one or two of the major structural components of a novel without having quite grasped the rest. I'm not exactly sure how such books actually get published (this may stem from my just having finished Noah Lukeman's excellent The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, which assures the avid reader/writer that stuff like this gets tossed out the window unless you're, say, Danielle Steel), but man, someone, somewhere, had to okay The Da Vinci Code.

Not to say Primal Fear is as flat-out bad as The Da Vinci Code. Diehl, while seemingly uncaring about the language itself-- while the phrase "riddled with clichés" has become something of a cliché in itself, it's quite an apt description of the writing here, and that's only the tip of the linguistic iceberg-- knows how to plot and pace. When an author doesn't spring the big twist on you until halfway through the book, and you don't care, that's pretty impressive.

In case you've been living under a rock since 1996, the plot: a sleazy, but very good, defense attorney, Martin Vail, wins a big case against the city of Chicago for police brutality against a minor mafioso. In revenge, they set him to defend Aaron Stampler, accused of killing the city's most beloved Catholic cardinal, found shivering in the confessional with the cardinal's blood all over him, the knife in his hand, wearing the cardinal's ring. An open and shut case, right? Well, you've seen Twelve Angry Men...

Unlike most courtroom dramas, this one spends most of its time outside the courtroom, with the first three hundred or so pages of the book devoted to Vail and his team trying to unravel the mystery of who really did kill the cardinal. (That's the big twist I mentioned before.) Once that's out of the way, then we get to the courtroom-drama bit. And, along with the language, that's Primal Fear's biggest failing: this is a very linear book, almost videogame-like in its insistence that we have to solve problem A, fight the boss battle, and then go on to problem B. Even though it's an old cliché in itself that (unless you're Law and Order) the basic piece of mystery-flavored entertainment will have two threads of mystery going at once-- only to be wrapped up into one at the end, of course-- utilizing that particular cliché at least shows that the artist doing the creating is capable of juggling such things in such a way that it keeps you entertained. Diehl is either beyond that or simply not capable of it, given the linearity here. He's just not interested. He's relying on the big reveal to throw the reader off. And it does, somewhat, but the linear nature of the narrative makes him reach for stuff that comes naturally to authors who do it the other way (dramatic tension being the main example).

In any case, the short answer, though it's already far too late for that: eh, not awful. But the movie is much, much better. Not terribly often I get to say that. ***

I read this book a few years back and could not get it out of my mind. The ending was just such a surprise. I read it and immediately had to rent the movie. The book was better, although I thought the movie was very good and true to the novel. Edward Norton played his character wonderfully.

This is my favorite all-time suspense novel.

This book is my favourite novel of all time. The story line is fantastic and the ending is simply chilling. The complex and descriptive paragraphs are completley stunning. The way Diehl can keep the story flying along with unbelievable speed and excitment is a rare and raw talent and is a joy to read. Also, as well as being fantasic read, it is also fasinating-it reveals the world of the court room in all its glories, as well as looking in to the human brain. Fasinating! If you haven't read it shame on you! Read it, you haven't read a thriller untill you read a novel by William Diehl!

Wow! What an intriguing read. This topic has fascinated me since childhood. This book is well-researched. So well in fact that the details of some accounts are belabored painstakingly. That would be my only complaint, i.e. at times I was begging for the punchline to the account and got lost in the details.

Overall, well-done and very meticulously put together. If you have an interest in medicine, the history of medicine or anthropology, this book will be facinating. However, it definitley takes some patience to get through due to the level of detail (commented on above).

Jan Bondeson's Buried Alive, is a very interesting read, well thought out and researched, she presents both fact and folklore and trying to sift through historical accounts of people being buried alive only to be save either by grave robbers, or distraught loved ones who want to see their dearly departed one last time. Do I believe that people in history were accidentally buried alive, yes, but I believe that most were buried alive on purpose, who could find a more perfect crime, since the evidence is well, buried. I do tend to agree that media had a lot to do with keeping the fear alive with accounts of people being saved from a most horrible death. However with out these fears, we probably wouldn't have had research into science and medicine, imagine all the debate between doctors and scientist of the exact moment of death, was it the void of a heart beat, was it an unresponsive individual who didn't respond to his or her name called out three times, or could it be the fact that the supposed corpse did not move when flame was applied to their feet or hands.
Bondeson's book is an excellent read.

A detailed history about people being buried alive. Not very readable as it seems to linger on a subject then repeat a previous subject, but interesting all the same, if gruesome.

Being buried alive is a horrible thought and the book Buried Alive shows that this thought is one that has been historically proven as valid. Moreover, the book showcases tales where people have been put into the ground and have managed to escape death only by the smallest inklings of luck, making for good reading. Bondeson's book showcases so much material in so many wonderful ways; there are accounts of people who actually made it out of their casket and a few tales that recount what it was like to realize that the person was inside of a casket, there are those cases where claw marks highlight an evening in that ended with a lack of air, and there are those that ended with shattered limbs on broken people that prove they were entombed a tad early. Sure, some of the material repeats itself in some ways BUT you have to envision the account and think of how it would be; each time it is a frightening affair. After reading those one cannot fault people's obsession with wanting to prevent this, nor does it seem all-that-unlikely that it could have occurred at the time when the science of burial is reviewed.
With regard to the science (or lack of science) in burial, the standards of disease and what they left behind, and the understanding that the folklore of people "coming back" saying they were monsters and that you should bury them quickly only makes the idea more frightening still because it makes a reader wonder about what is not recorded in the material.
And then there are the device pictures to drive the idea home.

I personally thought the book was a good read, and I enjoyed the fact that the author took the time to find out all they could on people actually being buried alive. I also like the reversal of the concept that was showcased, listing some of the efforts that people took just to keep from being buried alive. There were the early requests of royalty, for instance, that spoke of being on display for at least 24 hours and then being sawed in half just to make sure this did not happen. This is later followed up by citing different texts and a variety of reports; one of the sources in the books said that, in 1896, many a body was removed in New York for relocation and that 2 of every 100 showed signs that they had been alive when they were placed into the ground. With this mixture of data, of people's own accounts, and the 50 pictures added to the fray it makes for good reading and for an understanding into specific fears (like that of Poe, as stated in Premature Burial).

This book gives the reader a very good idea of the frenzy and fear our forefathers faced when death came to call.Being buried alive did happen on occasion and there were many close calls.Bondeson,an M.D. gives the topic a good going over and his research is full of stories,urban myths and legends mostly German and French who,it appears, were the most concerned and paranoid of being declared dead,usually by an untrained physician,casketed and buried before their last breath was taken.Coffin design,complete with bells,whistles,spring loaded pennants and flags,air tubes,and enough food for a week must have made many local cemeteries look more like a miniature golf course than what they were meant for,a final resting place for the dead.The medical establishment agreed that the only sure way to state you were dead was to allow what is known as putrification to begin.Once you began to look like a rotting Halloween pumpkin and smelled like, well, a really dead body, your family felt that it was time to dig the grave and drop you in.Waiting houses,what amounted to the frontrunners of todays modern day morgues were designed and were big business.Todays definition of death and the guidelines for establishing what death of the body is should put people at ease.Back then you might have had a red hot poker or a tobacco smoke enema put up your anus, have your feet slashed open,urine or something worse put in your mouth to name a few of the horrific techniques employed at the time.It makes one look at a stethoscope in a different light.Literary and cinematic treatments of this medical conundrum are discussed as well.For those who have ever wondered about or needed information about premature burial this book is a good place to start.It could have used more pictures which would have been welcome and at times I felt I was reading the same material over and over again hence only 3 stars.If funerial history is for you then you should dig in and bury yourself in its pages.If you should fall asleep while reading and wake up in a coffin don't worry too much,they've checked, your dead.