Wolfe himself said that Peter Fallows was supposed to be Alexander Cockburn.
It’s a minor thing, but consider THE FOURTH PROTOCOL.
In the book, dogged sleuth John Preston is working a tough case: a courier – who promptly killed himself – was caught smuggling in what may or may not be the part for an atomic bomb. Our hero tells his high-ranking boss the only hope is to keep cracking down on every airport and every pier in hopes of catching yet more smugglers, but it’s probably not going to work.
Sure enough, it doesn’t; every part gets delivered just fine, and the KGB is ready to set off a Frame-The-Americans nuke right there in the ol’ UK. That’s why Preston’s aforementioned boss sensibly cuts a deal with a high-ranking Soviet: give up the name and address of your would-be detonator and we’ll kill him instead of taking him alive.
In the book, saving all those innocents to stop the war is played off as a brilliant and practical solution that greatly impresses Preston, who is utterly delighted to keep working with his savvy boss. The movie – takes a sharp turn just then, so the ending can center on Preston expressing his unadulterated disgust at the abhorrent dealmaking. (Because, hey, it’s Michael Caine, and he deserves to go out on a high note of righteous indignation, y’know?)
The Natural.
In the book, Roy Hobbs isn’t the goodie two shoes that he is in the movie. It makes far more sense why he was gone for 16 years and blathered about the mistakes he had made.
Watching the movie, you wondered why he was kicking himself in the nuts for 16 years just because he visited a girl in her hotel room. The book Roy Hobbs, and the different ending, brings the story together better.
James Bond, 007.
In the books, Bond was a serious professional.
In the films, he joked about killing, something that would be totally foreign to the book Bond.
Definitely Mary Poppins.
I saw the movie as a kid. Then later as a teen I read the books. Mary Poppins of the movie is sickly sweet and a total goody-two-shoes. The Mary Poppins of the book totally kicks ass (and the kids really need it, too)!