The Superlative Man

By Herbert Thomas

Book Overview

The Superlative Man soars overhead, coming to the rescue of people in danger. The tabloids splash his every exploit across the front pages. The entire metropolis is in awe of him - except for Harvey Gander, whose parents died in a freak automobile accident caused by the Superlative Man as he was dashing off to another adventure.

Gander is a lonesome cub reporter for the Metropolitan Meteor, and when he is assigned a story about people saved by the Superlative Man, he stumbles on a conspiracy to expose the hero as a fake. The stakes are raised when two heavies threaten him just for interviewing Natasha Nyle, a footloose blonde from the Outer Borough. As the young reporter chases stories through the city's dark byways, moons over a slip of a girl named Violet Hayes, and falls under the spell of the wizened newshound Elmo Jade, he uncovers dark truths about the American superhero, while struggling to prove that he is, in his own way, a superlative man.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374529981
• ISBN13: 9780374529987
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Up on the bookshelf! It's a mystery! It's a comic! It's...

This is another boonie dog book review by Wolfie and Kansas. The inside-the-jacket blurb for Herbert Thomas's novel "The Superlative Man" compares it to Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett mysteries. The title, which refers to a flying costumed hero, brings to mind comic books. This book most closely resembles the "Marvels" series that Marvel Comics put out a few years ago, in which the story of superheroes was told from the vantage point of a normal human observer. Like "Marvels", "The Superlative Man" addresses the questions of what it is like to be human in a world with superhumans, and whether a mere human can make a difference in such a world.By focusing on the adventures of a normal human, not-so-mild-mannered reporter Harvey Gander (alter ego of no one), and by keeping the Superlative Man in the background, Thomas helps the reader suspend disbelief to an extent we have not found possible when reading novelizations featuring established comic-book superheros. This focus of the book may explain one omission. The events in "The Superlative Man" seem to take place at a time corresponding to the late "Golden Age" or early "Silver Age" of superhero comics. During this time, Superman teamed up with Krypto, Batman fought crime alongside Bat-hound, etc.. However, nowhere in the pages of Herbert Thomas's novel do we encounter Superlative Dog.

It's like Pulp Fiction, either you get it or you don't ...

The new magazine MAXIM listed this book as one of the best reads of the upcoming Summer season : "Herb Thomas knows the cliches of the thriller genre and has fun putting them to work in his own book - a dry martini of a mystery that's shaken, not stirred." I agree wholeheartedly! This novel is a film noir page-turner wrapped with great sense of humor. It takes you to familiar, yet dreamlike world where there are no coincidences and where the main character makes the courageous choice of facing his worst nightmares, and in the process finds his strength.

read in one sitting -- a complete page turner

Got an advance copy of this book from a friend of mine at a publishing house in New York. He claimed this book was the next big one, a huge hit in the waiting. I had serious doubts, as I always do when people proclaim the next big one. But I will tell you now, and listen up good -- The Superlative Man is one of the best books I have ever read. From the moment I started, I was capitivated with story, descriptions, and surroundings. I was up til 3 in the morning on a workday, I could not put it down. I have not had the pleasure of doing that since my college days. I read the future of fiction writing last night, and his name is Herbert Thomas