John R. Maxim

Critically acclaimed author John R. Maxim has written a total of fifteen novels and one biography. Platforms, his first novel, was published in 1980. It centers on Peter Halloran, a typical New York City commuter, who takes the train into the urban jungle every day from his home in suburban Connecticut. He is, like many characters with a similar background, profoundly unhappy: he no longer loves his wife and cannot find a way to communicate with his son. Halloran’s dismal, yet ordinary life suddenly becomes extraordinary when he sees a dead man waiting with him on the train platform. He tries to convince himself he had been hallucinating, until he sees the same man, supposedly deceased, again and again. Halloran is then caught up in the violent secrets of his supposedly quiet Connecticut town, forcing readers to question their own suburban safety and whether or not their lives are really as ordinary as they think. With this well received debut, Maxim used some of his own life experiences to solidify the personal style that marked many of his early novels: thrillers, mainly set in a meticulously described New York City, in which average people are involuntarily involved in amazing events that allow them to break out of their everyday routine. Perhaps this is because Maxim himself abruptly changed his own life by publishing his first novel well into his adult years.