Product Description

The story of the Phantom after he has escaped to New York, where he begins his new and secret life. He carves out a kingdom of fortune and power, and realizes his dream to build the most glittering opera house in the world - a perfect place to lure Christine, the victim of his obsessive love.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #263523 in Books
• Released on: 1999-11-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 229 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"It was a man, standing quite motionless and staring down. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and was otherwise wrapped in a flowing cloak that flapped about him in the wind." Making a departure from his bestselling political thrillers, Fredrick Forsyth takes a literary leap in The Phantom of Manahattan, the sequel to Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.

Inspired by a meeting with Andrew Lloyd Webber, who longed for a sequel to his world-renowned musical, Forsyth decided after extensively researching the subject to rekindle the legend. The story opens in 1906, 12 years after the Phantom escapes a bloodthirsty mob at L'Opera in Paris and mysteriously vanishes without a trace. On her death bed, the Mistress of the Chorus, Madame Anionette Giry, confesses that she plucked a horrifically deformed boy from a carnival prison and spirited him away to live in recesses of L'Opera: "[His] face was distorted down one side as if struck long ago by monstrous hammer and the flesh of this visage was raw and shapeless like molten candle wax. The eyes were deep-set in sockets puckered and misshapen." Keeping to the shadowy nooks of the opera house, Erik Mulhiem, became known as the Phantom, living a mysterious, solitary existence. However, that abruptly ended when he fell in love with a beautiful diva, Christine Daae. Unable to control his obsession, he flees to America with the help of Madame Giry. There, after years of destitution and misery, he builds a vast empire and devises a plan to ensnare his beloved Christine.

Along with the legendary staples, the delightful cast of supporting characters--from the refined, French lawyer with a pinched disposition, to Cholly Bloom, a street-wise New York hack--appears in chapter vignettes enriching the plot and propelling the scenes, so that it reads in documentary form. And preface-skippers be warned: The introduction gives essential background to the sequel, as well as interesting tidbits about the architecture and history of L'Opera. For example, did you know there is buried lake underneath that is biannually maintained? Or that almost half of its 17 floors are subterranean and were once used for grisly tortures and imprisonment during a military coup in the early 1870s? In fact, that, coupled with reports of ghostly sightings and unexplained accidents fed Leroux's imagination and led to his classic creation.

A marvellous continuation of a timeless tale, The Phantom of Manhattan is a premium insurance policy on a long-lived love story. --Rebekah Warren

From the Back Cover
In this brilliantly conceived novel, master storyteller Frederick Forysth brings the legend of the mysterious Phantom back to life.

After his failed attempt to kidnap his beloved Christine, the beautiful young opera singer, and a harrowing escape from the hands of an angry mob at the Paris Opera House, the Phantom was never seen again.

Until now...

In The Phantom of Manhattan, we learn of is daring journey to New York where he has begun a life anew as a lonely, secretive and wealthy figure.

Unseen, he watches over all as he plots his crowning achievement - the creation of the world's greatest and most glittering opera house - a grand palace that will set the stage for a fateful reunion with Christine, now a world-famous and celebrated diva. The final act in this haunting tale of unrequited love and obsession results in an explosive culmination of triumph and tragedy.

About the Author
Frederick Forsyth
Frederick Forsyth is the author of nine bestselling novels: The Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, The Fist of God and Icon. His other works include The Biafra Story, The Shepherd, a short story collection, No Comebacks, and a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, The Phantom of Manhattan. He has also collected together an anthology of flying tales, Great Flying Stories, which includes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Roald Dahl, Len Deighton and H.G. Wells.

Customer Reviews

Most Disappointing
I am a Phantom Phan, so when I came across this book in the library, I instantly picked it up and borrowed it. Finished in 1 day, afterall, it is a small volume with huge font.
The Phantom of Manhattan was a shallow and tacky book with a storyline saturated with flawes and flimsy plots. The ending was an anticlimax, never have I read such a poorly finished novel, even an online fanfiction can beat this book by miles.

I truly hope that no other phantom lovers will read this book and lose their love for Phantom. This book is not worth £10, and I am glad that my book was borrowed not bought. It would be an awful waste of space on my shelf and it is in my brain.

phantom of manhattan
having read all of his other books i was greatly looking forward to this. how wrong i was. Forsyth begins by spending about 40 pages, no critisizing, but ripping to shreds the original author and his novel for its amatuerishness and implausability. he then proceeds to write quite possibly the worst and most implausible book i have ever read. i really dont recommend you to buy it. buy one of his others instead.

Don't buy this unless you've had a frontal lobotomy
Yes, before you say anything, I am a fan of Phantom, both the book and the musical, but I am not writing this out of a misplaced sense of ownership over the characters or plotline or any other such ridiculousness. I was actually very open-minded when beginning this book and quite looking forward to seeing how the original story, which could have ended in many different ways, could be reworked by means of a sequel. Being that Forsyth is a bestseller I guessed he'd be the man for the job, but frankly, I couldn't have been more wrong. I was actually quite embarrassed that he could so insult Leroux (as he does at the beginning of his oh-so-quality oeuvre) and then go on to write such a trashy, amateurish book, the main purpose of which seems to be name-dropping in a most bizarre and random fashion - who cares if one of the characters (written entirely, by the way, in a strange dialect - Bronx perhaps?) saw Irving Berlin in a bar? I certainly didn't and to be quite frank was surprised I was still conscious at that point; the only thing keeping me so was my incredulity that a writer to whom such praise has been attributed could resort to this. Was the manuscript even read before being sent to the publishers? Perhaps there was a deadline to meet and a spare 24 hours in which to churn this out. I attribute the 1 star to the pretty girl on the front cover as there is not much else to recommend this book. It has certainly put me off Forsyth for the foreseeable future and wasted a whole hour and a half of my life. If you'd rather spend your time on infinitely more entertaining things, like doing the laundry, you're more sensible than I was. At least you'll feel a sense of achievement after doing that rather than simply annoyance and the sensation that your brain is slowly turning to very soft cheese.