Novel: Marathon Man

Overview
William Goldman's Marathon Man is a taut, unsparing thriller that follows a young graduate student drawn into the shadowy aftermath of World War II and the corrupt networks that still profit from it. The novel alternates between quiet, everyday moments of scholarship and training for long-distance running, and sudden eruptions of violence and conspiracy. Goldman keeps the pace relentless, using a spare, mordant voice to stitch together suspense, moral ambiguity, and historical horror.

Main characters and setup
Thomas "Babe" Levy is a history graduate student in New York whose amateur life, studies, friendships, and a near-obsessive commitment to marathon training, becomes the counterpoint to the darker currents around him. His older brother, known as Doc, is a mysterious figure with shadowy ties to intelligence and clandestine operations; Doc's activities provide the first hints that a far-reaching criminal web is at play. The antagonist is Christian Szell, an ex-Nazi dentist whose calm, clinical cruelty masks a deeply entrenched entitlement to violence and plunder. Szell's past crimes and present quest for hidden diamonds anchor the novel's central conflict.

Plot and key conflicts
A sudden, brutal event, Doc's disappearance and death, throws Babe into confusion and danger. As he seeks answers, he discovers that Doc's murky dealings involved buried gems, intelligence contacts, and men willing to kill for old wartime spoils. Bureaucrats, small-time criminals, and veterans of clandestine services intersect, often betraying one another as they jockey for advantage. Babe's status as an innocent academic and endurance runner turns into a liability and, paradoxically, a resource: his capacity to endure pain and to keep going mirrors the demands placed upon him by the conspirators who hunt the diamonds.
The novel's most notorious sequence is the prolonged, clinical torture inflicted by Szell, which strips away physical and psychological defenses and forces Babe to confront the realities of savage, bureaucratized evil. Goldman stages the episode with procedural detail and cold tension, and he uses it to expose how systems of violence persist beyond war. The pursuit culminates in a violent, morally ambiguous confrontation that resolves the immediate threat but leaves lingering questions about justice, complicity, and survival.

Themes and tone
Marathon Man examines how the past refuses to remain past. Goldman's narrative repeatedly returns to the long shadow of wartime atrocities and to the ways ordinary people can be swallowed by histories they barely comprehend. Paranoia and betrayal are omnipresent: allies prove untrustworthy, institutions act self-servingly, and the line between victim and perpetrator blurs. The marathon motif, discipline, solitude, and endurance, functions as both a literal hobby and a metaphor for surviving systemic cruelty.
Goldman's prose alternates between dry, observant humor and sudden brutality, creating a tonal whiplash that heightens suspense. Dialogue snaps and scenes move economically, but the novel never sacrifices depth for speed; psychological portraiture and moral questions pulse beneath the plot's surface. The book asks whether perseverance alone can be a moral answer, and whether uncovering truth inevitably demands a terrible cost.

Legacy
Marathon Man cemented Goldman's reputation beyond screenwriting as a master of suspenseful storytelling with intellectual bite. Its blend of historical reckoning and contemporary thriller mechanics influenced subsequent works that fuse politics, crime, and personal endurance. The novel's iconic moments, especially the interrogation and the moral fallout, have persisted in cultural memory, prompting ongoing discussion about memory, complicity, and the survival of violence into peacetime.