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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Jan 2000, 528 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2000, 944 pages
DeMille delivers the signature plot twists and sardonic humor his readers have come to expect.
The Los Angeles Times calls him "a master of the intelligent thriller." Now blockbuster author Nelson DeMille brings back John Corey, the hero of his #1 New York Times bestseller Plum Island, in an epic story of breathless pace, heart-pounding suspense, and chilling fear...
THE LION'S GAME
From a special observation post in New York's JFK Airport, members of the elite Anti-Terrorist Task Force wait for a passenger arriving from Paris: an alleged Libyan terrorist known as "the Lion," who is defecting to the West. Everything is going as planned; Flight 175 with its hundreds of passengers, including the Libyan and his CIA and FBI escorts, is right on schedule. Yet it soon becomes apparent that something is horribly, eerily wrong. And that the affair of Flight 175 is only a prelude to the terror that is to follow...
John Corey, having survived three bullet wounds on the NYPD, knows that he's used up his allotment of good luck. Nevertheless, he signs on as a contract agent with the Federal government's Anti-Terrorist Task Force, working in the high-pressure Mideast section. Kate Mayfield is John's senior in rank and junior in age--a bad combination for both of them. Even so, she is able to hold her own against John's brash style, his contempt for Federal agents, and his obsession with doing everything his way.
As a bloody trail of terror streaks across the country, John and Kate soon learn that their quarry is more than a man; he has the instincts of a wild animal, the blood lust of a carnivore, and the boldness and speed of a cat of prey. The cunning, violence, and ruthlessness that Corey encounters are like nothing he has ever experienced before, even on the streets of New York. Until this assignment, Corey has always been lucky in dodging the fatal bullet. But luck, as he's learned on the streets, at the gambling table, and in love, always runs out. To survive in a new game with no rules at all, he must invent a strategy that includes no luck at all...
More than ever before, Nelson DeMille presents vivid, fully fleshed characters and delivers the signature plot twists and sardonic humor his readers have come to expect. THE LION'S GAME is truly a DeMille to remember.
Excerpt
The Lion's Game
You'd think that anyone who'd been shot three times and almost became an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations in the future. But, no, I must have this unconscious wish to take myself out of the gene pool or something.
Anyway, I'm John Corey, formerly of the NYPD, Homicide, now working as a Special Contract Agent for the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force. I was sitting in the back of a yellow cab on my way from 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport with a Pakistani suicide driver behind the wheel.
It was a nice spring day, a Saturday, moderate traffic on the Shore Parkway, sometimes known as the Belt Parkway, and recently renamed POW /MIA Parkway to avoid confusion. It was late afternoon, and seagulls from a nearby landfill-formerly known as a garbage dump-were crapping on the taxi's windshield. I love spring.
I wasn't headed off on vacation or anything like that - I was reporting for work with ...
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