Death Sentence by Brian Garfield

I bought and read a movie tie-in edition of Death Wish around the time the film was in theaters in '74, but I was unaware of the book sequel until I ran across the paperback edition of 1975's Death Sentence on a display rack in a department store. This must have been '76 or so.

I picked it up because I'd liked the first and had read interviews with Brian Garfield by then about his disillusionment with the film version. I was too young yet to appreciate his point.

But he stated he'd seen his protagonist, Paul Benjamin, as disturbed, not quite the gunslinger hero Charles Bronson played as Paul Kersey.

I've read initially a film adaptation was planned with Jack Lemon in the lead, which probably would have been closer to the book.

By the beginning of Death Sentence Benjamin has made his way to Chicago following the death of his daughter who was traumatized in the events of the first novel.

He picks up where he left off in his vigilante ways, targeting street toughs in the midst of preying on school girls and other dark characters, but soon a love affair begins to refocus Benjamin.

There's a sense that the book is a bit of atonement from Garfield who was disturbed by the movie's glorification of the protagonist's activities. In an interviews around the time of the film, he talked about the real life slashed convertible roof that made him think of striking back but that action vs. fantasy are two different things. He'd been to a friend's in Manhattan and came out to find his roof in ribbons, and that made him angry enough to want to hunt the culprit in the moment. He turned the feeling into the novel.

The Chicago cop chasing Benjamin's vigilante expresses similar thoughts on deed vs. fantasy down to the slashed car top in a TV interview in the novel, and soon the plotline begins to focus on the dangers of Benjamin's ways.

A copycat a tad more wanton and a tad less introspective begins to work the streets as well. Benjamin's mission turns from hunting down street denizens to dealing with his doppelgänger, and the story begins to move toward an inevitable showdown.

I actually found this novel a little more engaging than the first, and it has interesting moments focused on Benjamin's pragmatic planning from acquiring weapons to doing things like smearing grease on license plates to obscure the numbers.

It's thematic texture, while perhaps a little more heavy handed, makes it a layered and thoughtful thriller. A bit of that theme about the impact of revenge on the avenger is perhaps the common element between the book and the 2007 James Wan film adaptation with Kevin Bacon which otherwise creates a whole new story of a father tracking down gang members who've put his son in a coma.

One point that stood out for me in the book was that Benjamin purchased and was shown how to use a Centennial revolver with a safety grip in the handle. My dad actually owned a gun like that, so it helped me understand what the book was talking about.

All in all it's a good read and a good entry in Garfield's output of '70s thrillers which included Hopscotch and Recoil.

Impulse buy