The Lion's Game: Number 2 in series (John Corey) - Softcover

DeMille, Nelson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0751528234 ISBN 13: 9780751528237

Publisher: Sphere, 2001

Synopsis

April 1986 : American F-111 warplanes bomb the Al Azziyah compound in Libya where President Gadhafi is residing. A 16-year-old youth, Asad - Arabic for 'lion ' - loses his mother, two brothers and two sisters in the raid. Asad sees himself as chosen to avenge not only his family but his nation, his religion and the Great Leader - Gadhafi. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Twelve years later, Asad arrives in New York City, intent on killing all five surviving pilots across America who participated in the bombing, one by one. John Corey - from the international bestseller PLUM ISLAND - is no longer with the NYPD and is working for the Anti-Terrorist Task Force. He has to stop Asad's revenge killings. But first he has to find him.

A thrillingly entertaining read from a master storyteller.

About this title

Review:

John Corey and Asad Khalil have both lived hard-knock lives. As revealed in the monster best-seller Plum Island, the gruff, wisecracking NYPD homicide cop Corey stopped a hail of bullets-- but he couldn't stop his wife from walking out on him. Asad, raised under Moammar Gadhafi's eye after his dad's murder, lost his surviving family in the 1986 bombing of Libya. He's heard the nasty rumours about his mom and the Colonel, but he aims his rage at the infidels. The boy's got such a gift for terrorism, he's earned the nickname "the Lion", and Boris, his vodka-sozzled, sex-addicted émigré mentor, knows precisely how to conduct a murder tour of America one step ahead of the police, the FBI, the CIA and the ATTF (Anti-Terrorist Task Force), which combines members of all three. A pity Boris must die, but hey, he's an infidel too.

Asad pretends to defect, handcuffed to agents aboard a 747 bound for JFK, and he proves to be a worse seat mate than a siding salesman. Corey and his ATTF colleagues (most conspicuously the FBI's sexy Kate Mayfield, Corey's match in badinage and bad-guy busting) strive to halt Asad's methodical yet unpredictable blood bath. Skilfully, DeMille alternates chapters told from Asad's and Corey's points of view. DeMille did his authenticity homework. When we're not savouring his gift for wiseacre dialogue in the Corey/Kate chapters, we're sweating alongside Asad on his ghastly, ingenious jihad.

The New York Times put DeMille's social satire on a par with Edith Wharton's, and he's great on the colliding folkways of the feuding, mutually double-crossing crime-buster institutions. Naturally, he's on the side of the regular-guy flatfoots. "Cops sit on their asses and flip through their folders", he writes. "Feds sit on their derrieres and peruse their dossiers." And the CIA gets it in the shorts, satirically speaking. One deplores the mass murderers, but the book's real bad guys wear the priciest suits.

DeMille reportedly has a quarter-billion-dollar book contract. With fast, funny, absorbing thrillers like The Lion's Game, he's earned it. --Tim Appelo

Review:

As usual, DeMille artfully constructs a compulsively readable thriller around a troubling storyline, slowly developing his villain from a faceless entity into a nation's all-too-human nemesis. (PUBLISHERS WEEKLY)

About this edition

• Publisher: Sphere
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0751528234
• ISBN 13: 9780751528237
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 864