The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (published in 1973) is a thriller novel by Morton Freedgood, writing under the pseudonym John Godey. The name is derived from the train's radio callsign. When a New York City Subway train leaves to start a run, it is given a callsign based upon the time it left and where; in this case, Pelham Bay Park Station at 1:23 in the afternoon.

Plot summary

It starts as a normal day at the subway in New York, but the normality is interrupted by an unexpected hijacking of a subway train (on the number 6 line). The police force is confused by the hijacking because:
* the subway is a "closed system"; there is no place to take the train to escape, and
* all subway trains have a dead-man's switch which requires a live person at the controls to keep the train running, thus preventing a hijacker from escaping away from the running train.

The police frantically pursue the train on the city streets to deliver the ransom of one million dollars as the police attempts to negotiate and distract their attention. Unknown to the police, the four hijackers led by a mercenary named Ryder and a disgruntled former motorman Walter Longman have disabled the dead-man's switch. Once the hijackers receive their ransom money, they send the train off at top speed toward the terminal station where it would crash and thus kill all the passengers. Previously, the hijackers have left the train and attempted to escape out of the subway tunnels with their ransom money.

Adaptations

The novel has been adapted to film on three occasions:

*"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1974)
*"The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" (1998)
*"The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3" (2009)

External links