Sunday, August 14, 2011

Wild Fire by Nelson DeMille

I listen to enough audio books that I sometimes forget whether I've listened to one before.  That's what happened when I checked out Nelson DeMille's Wild Fire from the public library.  Chapter one didn't play too long before I realized I'd done it again.  But, because I'm too lazy to return it and get another and because the plot involves nukes and because it had been several years since my first listening, I kept it.

Former NYPD detective and supreme smart ass John Corey now works for the federal government's Anti-Terrorism Task Force.  When a colleague goes missing on a stakeout of an oil billionaire John and his FBI agent wife pledge to get to the bottom of things.  What they don't know (but their bosses might) is that the billionaire has hatched a plan to rid the world of Islamist terror once and for all.  His thinking is something like this: if he destroys an American city or two with nuclear weapons and makes it look like a terrorist plot, the U.S. government will enact a secret protocol called Wild Fire to deal with the Islamists.

DeMille tells a pretty good story and the fact that his lead character, Corey, is such a wise guy keeps things interesting.  Moreover, you're told exactly what the bad guy is planning very early in the book and the rest of the story is the good guys trying to figure it out before it's too late. A friend of mine prefers DeMille to Vince Flynn, another thriller author whom I like for more reasons other than the fact that his lead character is a graduate of my alma mater, Syracuse University.  All in all, not a bad story even for the second time around.

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