Heat 2
A Novel
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller!
Michael Mann, four-time-Oscar-nominated writer-director of The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, Miami Vice, Collateral, and Heat teams up with Edgar Award–winning author Meg Gardiner to deliver Mann’s first novel, an explosive return to the universe and characters of his classic crime film—with an all-new story unfolding in the years before and after the iconic movie
“A hard-boiled, cinematic read that moves as fast as a well-planned heist.” —Esquire
One day after the end of Heat, Chris Shiherlis (Val Kilmer) is holed up in Koreatown, wounded, half delirious, and desperately trying to escape LA. Hunting him is LAPD detective Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino). Hours earlier, Hanna killed Shiherlis’s brother in arms Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) in a gunfight under the strobe lights at the foot of an LAX runway. Now Hanna’s determined to capture or kill Shiherlis, the last survivor of McCauley’s crew, before he ghosts out of the city.
In 1988, seven years earlier, McCauley, Shiherlis, and their highline crew are taking scores on the West Coast, the US-Mexican border, and now in Chicago. Driven, daring, they’re pulling in money and living vivid lives. And Chicago homicide detective Vincent Hanna—a man unreconciled with his history—is following his calling, the pursuit of armed and dangerous men into the dark and wild places, hunting an ultraviolent gang of home invaders.
Meanwhile, the fallout from McCauley’s scores and Hanna’s pursuit cause unexpected repercussions in a parallel narrative, driving through the years following Heat.
Heat 2 projects its dimensional and richly drawn men and women into whole new worlds—from the inner sanctums of rival crime syndicates in a South American free-trade zone to transnational criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia. The novel brings you intimately into these lives. In Michael Mann’s Heat universe, they will confront new adversaries in lethal circumstances beyond all boundaries.
Heat 2 is engrossing, moving, and tragic—a masterpiece of crime fiction with the same extraordinary ambitions, scope, and rich characterizations as the epic film.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Emmy-winning director, screenwriter, and producer Mann has coauthored his first crime novel with Edgar winner Gardiner (The Dark Corners of the Night), which falls short as a sequel to Mann's 1995 movie, Heat. Heat focused on a battle of wits between Neil McCauley, the head of a Los Angeles robbery crew, and the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division's Vincent Hanna, who sacrificed a personal life to his job. Since McCauley was gunned down by Hanna at the movie's climax, the focus is on the member of the robber's crew who escaped, Chris Shiherlis. Flashbacks describe Shiherlis's life before the film, starting in 1988, and sections set in 1996 and 2000 detail his time on the run, during which he commits new crimes, ending up in Paraguay as a result. Hanna also gets a backstory, including his search for a sadistic murderer and rapist during his tenure with the Chicago police, which picks up again, unexpectedly, in 2000. Neither character is meaningfully fleshed out, and the prose is often stilted and baroque ("The cheap porn of Alex's illogic roars in Hanna's head"). Even passionate fans of the movie are likely to feel that Mann should have quit while he was ahead.
Customer Reviews
Page Turner
Couldn’t put it down.
Valiant effort, but the sequel was never going to live up to the original.
The story of Heat 2 is a prequel and a sequel of sorts to the film epic, Heat. I enjoyed having the curtain pulled back a bit to learn who these iconic characters were prior to when we’re introduced to them in the 1995 movie. That said, there were no stunning revelations that explained what fueled their desire to live outside the traditional boundaries of society. Rather we were introduced to more tales of daring heists and tales of vengeance.
The book for me boiled down to a few exciting scenes while Michael Mann stumbled through the in between trying to work out how to connect them. Maybe that’s exactly what we should expect when a film director writes a novel, but here we are.
I’ll be fascinated to find out how Mann attempts to pull off the feature film version of this story, given that it has been 30 years since the original. Casting and visual effects may be the real heroes of the sequel. Time will tell. If anyone could pull it off, I would say it is Michael Mann. On the other hand, it could be another example of a masterful director unable to walk away from his opus and instead marring its legacy.
Excellent
JMO, would have been an easier read with a straighter timeline,
BUT, still an excellent read. Hoping for a follow-up.
Highly recommended!