Platforms

By John R. Maxim

Book Overview

In most ways, Peter Halloran is an average suburbanite, commuting each day from his home in Riverside, Connecticut, to his job in New York City. He lives with a wife he does not love and a son he cannot talk to. But his ordinary life begins to unravel on the day he sees a dead man standing on the train platform. The first sighting is followed by another...and then a third. And soon Halloran is trapped in a bizarre and brutal struggle he cannot begin to comprehend -- as a horrific web of violence and evil emanates from the train station that serves his quiet New England town. Because Riverside is home to dark secrets and lethal mysteries -- and a terror only Peter Halloran can see. Suddenly, one ordinary man is on the frontlines of a war like no other -- and fighting desperately for lives that may already be lost...including his own.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399125353
• ISBN13: 9780399125355
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Halloran sees dead people....

written long before The Sixth Sense, Maxim's novel takes us into the world of the paranormal; in his plot, dead people are still visible to the living world, at least to those who have the sensory perception to see them. These spirits cry for release from being caught between two worlds as a result of an electric train accident....three of them have happened in different parts of the world.Maxim's hero, Peter Halloran is just an ordinary man, living in Riverside, CT (Fairfield?), lamenting the status of a marriage gone loveless. On the day of the train disaster, he is late and misses the train, narrowly escaping death. Later, he becomes aware that he can see the dead commuters, trapped in the spirit world, and giving off a kinetic energy that is trapping and destroying the townspeople. At first he disbelieves his powers; then he gets drawn into the larger world of psychic phenomena, and the attempt to "help the victims over" when he meets Jennifer Wilde, a famous psychic. The character of Jennifer is perhaps the best drawn element of the novel. She travels with a strange entourage: her assistant, Alex, who supplies the killing force when victims of the energy field begin to commit criminal acts, Mordicai Bloomer, another psychic nursing an unrequited love for Jennifer, and Lictor, her contact IN the spirit world. In a tense and scary drama, Maxim weaves these characters in and out of trouble while they try to resolve the dilemma of the station and save those who are trapped. There are some horrible secondary characters, such as Peter's wife, Barbara,but, all in all, Maxim tells a satisfying tale.It was my first Maxim novel, and I'm encouraged to read the Bannerman books, based on how much I enjoyed this story.

Fabulous read in classic Maxim style!

This book, as most Maxim works do, starts ordinarily enough. Pete Halloran is an ordinary guy who undergoes an extraordinary accident in a train station. The resulting trauma leaves the ability to see AND communicate with dead people!! From there this book goes on to stand everything us mere mortals have, heretofore, ascribed to the question of life after death on it's head. This book challenges the reader to expand their thinking. It has smooth, flowing prose. It has a pace that will be familiar to veteran Maxim readers. It is, quite simply put, a terrific book and I would strongly recommend it.