John Rambo är ovårdad, långhårig och ser allmänt sliten ut där han står vid bensinstatonen i Madison och liftar. Det blir polischef Teasle som kör honom till stadsgränsen. Teasle vill inte ha några främlingar, några störande element i sin stad. Men Rambo har inte ätit något och hade inte planerat att tvingas ut från staden så prompt så han vandrar tillbaka in till centrum för att käka.

Det är upprinnelsen till en lång kamp mellan Teasle och Rambo som slutar med en galen jakt där allt är tillåtet och där jägaren inte längre är polischefen, utan John Rambo, en grön basker, en Vietnamveteran belönad med Tapperhetsmedalj och fullständigt oslagbar vid krig i vildmarken...

Three things about 'First Blood' surprised me. It's a little over fifty years old but it doesn't feel dated or old-fashioned. It feels more modern than a few 1980s horror classics I've read. It doesn't read like a debut novel. It's written with confidence, it takes a few risks with form and the people in it feel real. It is very different from the movie. I know this shouldn't be much of a surprise - movie adaptations are like that - but the differences are extreme and profound. Almost nothing that pulled me into the book found its way into the movie. On the other hand, I think the ending of the book wasn't its strongest point and wouldn't have satisfied a cinema audience.

I came to the book with memories of a bored, redneck Police Chief, so wrapped up in his own authority that he pushes a drifter too far and a shirtless Sylvester Stallone, with a strip of fabric tied around his head and an automatic rifle in his hands, blowing up the town, killing dozens of people and then complaining that his country doesn't love him as much as he loves it. At the time, I thought it was a clever action movie with a lead actor who was great at the action sequences but who was out of his depth whenever he had to speak in full sentences.

I had to push those memories aside almost from the first page. The sheriff, it turned out, was a reasonable, mostly polite, mostly patient man who made every effort to de-escalate the blossoming conflict with John Rambo, right up to the point where Rambo bugs out and kills a police officer by slicing a straight razor through his guts. John Rambo wasn't just a Vietnam Vet, tramping through America, minding his own business and coping with his PTSD. John Rambo was what the US military had trained him to be: an efficient killer who enjoys his work and never backs down once he's engaged with the enemy.

David Morrell lets the reader spend a lot of time inside the heads of Wilfred Teasle, the Chief Of Police in the small town of Madison, Kentucky and John Rambo, a bearded long-haired drifter with nothing to his name but a buckskin jacket, some ratty jeans, a stained sweatshirt and an old sleeping bag. Morrell shows the reader how both men think, how each of them tries to pull back from a conflict that's likely to go bad and how each of them fails. He lets the reader see how similar the two men are, although they're a generation apart. Teasle's war was Korea, Rambo's war was Vietnam. Both men won medals. Both did things that they'd rather not remember. Both of them are capable of extreme violence.

One of the things that surprised me was that I felt more sympathy with Teasle than Rambo. Teasle had built a life for himself. Maybe not a completely successful one, his marriage is crumbling and he has no friends, but one committed to trying to prevent and hold back violence. Rambo is still working through what his war taught him about himself: that he's a ruthless man who will do whatever it takes to survive; that he's a killer who kills neither from anger nor fear but because it's necessary; that deep down he knows that he enjoys killing and is looking for an excuse to lose himself in the joy of doing it well.

'First Blood' is structured as a conflict between these two worldviews. The conflict itself is dramatic and filled with violence but those things punctuate the story, they are not the point of it.

The book has a very strong start and most of the time I found it very engaging. The shifts in point of view and the flashbacks to reveal the backstories of Teasle and Rambo worked well. The action scenes were compelling. It lost me a little towards the end. The ending is very different from the film. I think it's both more appropriate and more believable but it's a difficult story to tell and at points, I felt it went on too long. I also felt the almost telepathic connection that Teasle and Rambo seem to have towards the end was a slightly heavy-handed way of making their shared backgrounds visible.

I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Eric G. Dove. His delivery felt pitch-perfect to me and carried me effortlessly through the book. ( )

I had two books last week from publishers that were at polar opposite ends of the spectrum of "gendered" literature. They both sucked.

First Blood is the novel that the movie Rambo was based and is total dick lit. Basically, a war vet with PTSD meets a cop with control issues and they spend the rest of the book trying to kill each other for no adequately explored reason. Head Over Heels on the other hand is quintessential chick lit: fluffy romance with no real conflict, just misunderstanding and miscommunication, but then everybody talks and lives happily ever after. Neither book was badly written, both had consistent pacing and both are reprints which were originally published decades ago. And my hatred for both of them is mostly predicated on lack of balance. There is hardly any conversation in First Blood (entire chapters pass with nobody taking to another human being!) and the majority of the characters only exist to be killed off (I was disoriented by how high the body count was). Head over Heels is all talk and no action and by the end of it I was really wishing somebody would be killed (or, even better, several people), because there are far too many characters who only exist to be a romantic interest.

In a perfect world, Rambo and Sheriff Teasdale are magically transported to Upper Sibley and blow the place to smithereens. Everybody dies, except for Teasdale and Jessie (the main protagonist from Head Over Heels whose relationship with her long-lost love was so inane I nearly puked) who fall in love and build a perfect literary world where people occasionally get killed but everybody talks about it first.

Thank you to the publisher who sent me a copy of this book for review. ( )

Unlike most people I have never seen the film Rambo, so although I knew the basics of the plot I starting reading the novel with no real knowledge of what to expect.

My favourite type of books are those where someone is being pursued through the wilderness, where they have to pit wits against nature and
the men following them.

Rambo is all of this and more. He is an ex veteran in his 20's and drifting from town to town, with long hair and an unkempt appearance he is soon spotted by the local police and escorted out of town. Not willing to be treated unfairly he soon makes his way and ends up imprisoned. Confined to the cell he starts experiencing flashbacks to the Vietnam war and as soon as an opportunity arises he breaks out. With nowhere to go he heads into the mountains. Using his survival skills he proves a hard man to pin down frustrates all the efforts of the local police, this causes them to call in Rambo's ex-commanding officer,Sam Trautman. This all leads to cat and mouse chase that can only result in a grand finale.

A really fast paced adventure thriller that deals with PTSD probably before it became really as well known. This was my third book by Morrell and I'm sure it won't be the last. ( )

A good thriller, with a much better end than the film. ( )