- a sleazy executive in the Klaxon Oil Building who is sleeping with Stephanie Leland Gennaro and does drugs such as cocaine, which makes Leland dislike him. In the middle of the novel, Ellis tries to help the terrorists and himself by trying to talk Leland into giving himself up. When Leland refuses Ellis's proposal, Gruber kills Ellis, which makes Leland feel responsible for his death. Background and film adaptation In 1975, author Roderick Thorp saw the film The Towering Inferno, which is about a skyscraper that catches on fire. After seeing the film, Thorp fell asleep and had a dream of seeing a man being chased through a skyscraper by men with guns. He woke up and later took that idea and turned it into The Detective sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever. Roderick Thorp decided for the book to be a sequel to The Detective so it could be made into a follow-up film starring Frank Sinatra as Joe Leland. Thus, the storyline hypothetically takes place some four decades after its predecessor (as Leland was age thirty-six in that novel). Sinatra declined the offer. It was then offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and a number of other actors until Bruce Willis signed on for the role. Although the film (re-titled Die Hard) was altered to be a stand-alone film with no connections to Thorp's novel, and does not follow the source material very closely, some of its memorable scenes, characters, and dialogue are adapted directly from the book. Some of the biggest changes in the film included the older hero of the novel becoming 25 years younger, his name changed from "Joe Leland" to "John McClane", the person he is in the skyscraper to visit changing from his daughter to his estranged wife, and the American "Klaxon Oil Corporation" becoming the Japanese "Nakatomi Corporation". The "terrorists" in the film are actually professional thieves that are after $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds kept in the building's vault and are only posing as terrorists to draw attention away from the robbery. In the film, most of them are German (including their leader), the rest being of varying ethnicities and nationalities. The novel also features women amongst the terrorists. The overall tone of the novel was far darker, with underlying themes of guilt, alcoholism and the complexity of a disturbed human mind. The ending of the novel is also different in