The Lion's Game

Resumen del libro

Lifting a creepy detail from the Flying Dutchman legend--a ship manned by corpses--DeMille raises the curtain on a new John Corey mystery with a 747 landing itself at New York. Onboard, everyone is dead. The macabre scene alarms the NYPD's Corey even more because the deceased do not include a particular prisoner-passenger listed on the manifest, Asad Khalil, "defecting" Libyan terrorist. Since Corey's best-selling exploits in "Plum Island" (1997), he has joined an interagency team slated to take Khalil into custody. The perils of Khalil being at large are immediately impressed upon Corey and his new FBI love interest when they discover half their colleagues murdered. Switching to omniscient narration, DeMille flashes back to clarify Khalil's motivation: he seeks vengeance for the death of his family in the 1986 U.S. air strike against Libya, and he proceeds to wreak it with psychopathic efficiency. Suspense arises from Corey and company's pursuit of Khalil, a mission complicated by Corey's suspicions of the CIA contingent assigned to the case and by Corey's un-PC, antiauthoritarian sarcasm. Flouting orders at every opportunity, Corey gradually puts the pieces together to figure out what readers have long known: Khalil is systematically knocking off the pilots of the 1986 raid. The wild climax leaves the coast clear for a sequel, and why not? DeMille again puts daylight between himself and the competition in the international-thriller sweepstakes.