I’m a huge fan of Nelson DeMille, an author with an amazing consistency in delivering fun, engaging, and well-written books. Surprisingly only one of them has been made into a movie, the somewhat disappointing The General’s Daughter, but it’s no smudge on the books themselves. Approachable books, but not total junk food. Though his best book is still probably The Gold Coast [I’m just now starting the follow-up The Gate House], his most enduring series of books feature former NYPD hardass John Corey as the protagonist. The first book, Plum Island, set the stage and the it’s been a steady diet of good things ever since. Standouts are The Lion’s Game and Night Fall, and though the most recent [The Lion] let me down a bit there’s a rather juicy bit of info in the audiobook incarnation of the story.
Nelson DeMille intimates in the interview following the audiobook that he has one more John Corey/Kate Mayfield story in him before putting the characters to bed once and for all. Interestingly enough, though it’s not his next book [which he reveals is an airline disaster story akin to his career-making Mayday] he has the premise set up:
John Corey and his wife Kate, members of the Anti-terrorism Task Force, are sent to Yemen to deal with a growing threat. What it does is strip away all the comfort zones present in all the other books. There’s no New York street smarts, no laundry lists of contacts and supporting characters from his past, just a very dangerous war zone and the character able to really go hog wild on foreign soil. Exciting stuff for fans, because while we never want to hear that a beloved character is going away, he was originally planned as a one-time thing and it strains logic to have this semi-retired guy still encountering villains well into his silver years.
The rights to The Lion have been snapped up but surprisingly nowhere near as cinematic as its predecessor but John Corey is a great character that deserves the big screen treatment. Sadly, 9/11 softens a lot of the impact of that novel and the one that followed but the fact remains that DeMille is one of the great mainstream writers we have and more is always better.