My wife left me the next year and that certainly was a change.

Goldman stopped writing novels after the publication of Brothers: Goldman later recalled, 'I'd written one sequel before, which was Father's Day, and I had this notion that Doc wasn't dead and I thought, 'Shit, I'll bring him back and see what happens.' When Babe and Scylla meet, they embrace and cry. Scylla, not knowing her identity, kills her. Babe's wife, Melissa, has been hired by a facility in England ostensibly to fine-tune speech of amusement park props - in reality, the exploding children. Beverage had already sent exploding children, but they largely detonate prematurely and the mutual retaliation fails to materialize. The final invention is exploding children made to kill important politicians and scientists to goad major world powers into attacking each other so the United Kingdom, left standing, could rule the world. Scylla kills the Blonde, Perkins's killer, and Division head Beverage dies from suicide after Scylla confronts him. Scylla initially only knows of two inventions, but learns about the third after Ma's death. At Princeton University he kills 'Arky' Vaughan, who made the suicide chemical, while in New York he kills Milo Standish, who created a chemical that makes other people do his wishes.Īfter 'Ma' Perkins, the spy who helped him recover, is murdered, Scylla goes to London. He later goes to New York State, both New York City and Upstate New York.

Scylla initially convalesces on an island, as he had been in recovery for a decade. government, the Bloodies, advocating war, and Godists, who wish for more peaceful methods. Scylla's job is to kill American scientists who made three inventions meant to give the United States a military advantage against the Soviet Union. The plot concerns an effort to instigate World War III by means of simultaneous, worldwide terrorist attacks, which Scylla attempts to stop.

In the sequel, Henry David 'Hank' Levy (nicknamed 'Doc' and ' Scylla'), brother of Marathon Man's protagonist Thomas Babington 'Tom' Levy (a.k.a. It had mixed reviews, with Goldman himself rating it unfavorably. It is the sequel to his 1974 novel Marathon Man and is Goldman's final novel.ĭaniel Woodrell wrote in The Washington Post that 'The ultimate significance of the title becomes clear only in the surprising, explosive twist at the end.' The BBC later aired a radio adaptation.

Brothers is a thriller novel by William Goldman.

Marathon man goldman