Thriller Writer Nelson DeMille Dies at 81

Michael Schaub at Kirkus Reviews reports that Nelson DeMille died. He was 81.

Nelson DeMille, a New York City native, was raised on Long Island and educated at Hofstra University. He joined the U.S. Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam, where he earned a Bronze Star.

He made his literary debut in 1974 with the novel The Sniper, which introduced Joe Ryker, a tough New York police detective; the character would return in several more novels, including The Hammer of God and The Night of the Phoenix.

DeMille was known for his series of books featuring U.S. Army investigator Paul Brenner, whom he introduced in the 1992 novel The General’s Daughter, which was adapted into a 1999 film starring John Travolta. He also published several novels with the character John Corey, a retired New York detective; that series debuted in 1997 with Plum Island.

His most recent book, Blood Lines, co-written with his son Alex DeMille, was published last year.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

Nelson DeMille Dies at 81 | Kirkus Reviews 

I enjoyed his novels. I interviewed Nelson DeMille in 2017 for Counterterrorism magazine.

You can read my Q&A with him below:

A Look Back At Nelson DeMille's Vietnam War Novel 'Word of Honor'

Back in 2003 I watched a good film on TV called Word of Honor, which was based on Nelson DeMille’s novel. Don Johnson, Arliss Howard and other actors delivered fine performances in the film. 

Although I had previously read Nelson DeMille’s fine thrillers, I had not read Word of Honor, so I went out and bought the book and read it. I’m glad I did, as Word of Honor is perhaps Nelson DeMille’s finest novel. 

Nelson DeMille (seen in the above photos) served as an infantry officer in the Vietnam War and his experiences in the war made the novel and film gripping, insightful and realistic.  

I served as a teenage sailor on an aircraft carrier on “Yankee Station” off the coast of Vietnam in 1970-1971, but my late older brother Ed Davis, like Nelson DeMille, served as a soldier "in country" in Vietnam. 

I’ve maintained an interest in the war and I’ve read and reviewed many history books, personal accounts and novels on the war. I’ve also interviewed a good number of military men, including Nelson DeMille, CIA officers and journalists who were there.   

Word of Honor is described below on Nelson DeMille’s website: 

He is a good man, a brilliant corporate executive, an honest, handsome family man admired by men and desired by women. But a lifetime ago Ben Tyson was a lieutenant in Vietnam. There the men under his command committed a murderous atrocity - and together swore never to tell the world what they had done. Now the press, army justice, and the events he tried to forget have caught up with Ben Tyson. His family, his career, and his personal sense of honor hang in the balance. And only one woman can reveal the truth of his past - and set him free. 

You can purchase Word of Honor via the below link:

Word of Honor: DeMille, Nelson: 9780446301589: Amazon.com: Books

 And you can watch the film via the below link:

Word Of Honor | Full Movie | Don Johnson - Bing video       

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with Nelson DeMille via the below link: 

Paul Davis On Crime: My Q&A With Nelson DeMille, Author Of 'The Lion's Game' And 'The Panther'

My Washington Times Review Of Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille's 'The Deserter'

The Washington Times published my review of The Deserter.

Inspired by the strange case of Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. Army sergeant who deserted his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and was subsequently captured by the Taliban and held captive until 2014, ”The Deserter” is a thriller about a U.S. Army officer who also deserts his post in Afghanistan and is held captive by the Taliban.

But the fictional Capt. Kyle Mercer is different in many ways from the real deserter. Mercer is an elite special operator who kills and beheads his captors on video and then looks into the camera and resigns his Army commission. Mercer resembles more the renegade Col. Kurtz character in Francis Ford Coppola’s film “Apocalypse Now” than the oddball Bergdahl.

In Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille’s “The Deserter” two U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) investigators are assigned the task of finding and bringing to justice the deserter, who has been identified as living in Venezuela. The two investigators are Chief Warrant Officer Scott Brodie and Chief Warrant Officer Maggie Taylor. 

 “Brodie tried to recall what he knew about this case. Captain Kyle Mercer had been a member of the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment — Delta, more famously known as Delta Force. He was the elite of the elite, one of the most potent weapons in the military’s arsenal, and the tip of the spear in the counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan,” the authors write.

“One night three years earlier, while stationed with a small team at a remote combat outpost in the rugged Hindu Kush, he walked off. According to his teammates, Captain Mercer must have left sometime after midnight. He took all his field gear with him, along with night vision goggles and his M4 rifle, but no one had actually seen him leave the outpost, and no one noticed he was missing until first light. Conclusion: He deserted.

“Desertion is rare. Desertion in a war zone like Afghanistan even rarer. And desertion in a war zone by an officer in an elite unit, unheard of.”

The desertion of Capt. Mercer is a mystery, a public relations nightmare and a major security risk, as he possessed in his head highly classified information about counterinsurgency operations. Capt. Mercer was a highly trained, experienced and well-regarded officer. All his teammates described him as a capable, competent, and brave commanding officer. Why a man like Capt. Mercer would desert is a mystery to the investigators.       

“Captain Mercer was an enigma even before he walked off in the night into a rugged mountain range in one most dangerous and godforsaken corners of the earth,” Nelson DeMille and his son Alex DeMille tell us.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/dec/16/book-review-the-deserter/ 

My Washington Times Review Of Nelson DeMille's 'The Cuban Affair'

The Washington Times published my review of Nelson DeMille’s The Cuban Affair.

In October 2015 author Nelson DeMille and his wife toured Cuba. Mr. DeMille made good use of his field research trip and in his new action-adventure novel “The Cuban Affair” we are offered his wry observations and running commentary on Cuba via his fictional character, Daniel “Mac” MacCormick.

Mac, a U.S. Army veteran who served as a combat infantry officer in Afghanistan, has settled in Key West, Florida. Mac, like Mr. DeMille’s other well-known character, John Corey, is an irreverent, laid back and wisecracking tough guy.

Like Ernest Hemingway’s Key West character Harry Morgan in his novel “To Have and Have Not,” Mac is a charter boat captain. And like Harry Morgan, Mac’s boat is hired for a trip to Cuba by some shady characters.

Ernest Hemingway looms large in this novel, as Mac discovers that the late, great writer is revered publicly in communist Cuba and there are statues, signs, T-shirts and photos of him in nearly every bar and restaurant he was said to have frequented when he lived there in the 1940s. So much so, that one Havana bar advertised proudly that Mr. Hemingway, “did not” drink there.

… Mac is asked to join a Yale University tour of Cuba with Sara, who offers the boat captain 50,000 dollars to also have his first mate take his boat to join a fishing tournament in Cayo Guillermo, Cuba.

“It was a favorite deep-sea fishing place of Ernesto,” Carlos tells Mac. “Hemingway, not Guevara.” Must be an old Cuban joke, Mac thinks.

In addition to the charter fee, she offers Mac two million dollars if he will travel with her on the tour and help her recover the 60 million dollars her Cuban grandfather banker hid in a cave in Cuba before he fled Castro’s revolution. Once they’ve recovered the money, her plan is to meet up with his boat and escape from the island with the loot. Mac and Jack sign on.

You can read the rest of the review via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/19/book-review-the-cuban-affair/ 

A Tudor Castle For The King Of Thrillers, Nelson DeMille

Joanne Kaufman at the New York Times offers an interesting and amusing piece on author Nelson DeMille’s dream house.

What would a celebrity profile be without some rich biographical detail? So here’s a little something to get the ball rolling: Nelson DeMille’s father, Huron, was a contractor.

Chew on it. Ponder it as you learn that despite the father’s occupation, the son — the best-selling author of thrillers like “Plum Island,” “Night Fall” and “Wild Fire” — didn’t think twice about writing a very large check for a house in the exclusive Hill section of Garden City, N.Y., a house whose foundation he had never probed, whose wiring he had never investigated and whose plumbing was a mystery. Truth to tell, he had only ever seen the place at night, as a guest of the owners.

“It looked great when I was there for parties,” said Mr. DeMille, 73, whose new novel, “The Cuban Affair,” will be published next month by Simon & Schuster. Then there was the provenance: The shingle-style manse had been built in the early 1920s by a business partner of Howard Hughes.

After the deal closed, in 1998, Mr. DeMille began strolling around his new acquisition, promptly realized the place was a wreck and called in a group of contractors, who, he recalled, “scratched their heads.” One of those head-scratchers was Mr. DeMille’s very own brother, who didn’t mince words: “Tear it down,” his brother said, channeling the movie “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.” Well, O.K.

Admirably, the wry Mr. DeMille took the whole thing in stride. “Maybe I always knew in the back of my mind that I was buying a building lot for a lot of money,” he said. “People always say, ‘Location, location, location,’ and houses on the Hill don’t come up for sale very often.

“I’d always fantasized about big houses,” Mr. DeMille continued. “I like to be able to wander around them. There are things you can do in a big house that you can’t do in a smaller house, like have the whole family over. I think that’s one of the reasons I wrote ‘Gold Coast,’” he said, referring to his 1990 novel set amid the lavish mansions of Long Island’s North Shore. “But even when I became a best seller, I lived in modest places. Now I had the chance to build my own house.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/realestate/a-tudor-castle-for-the-king-of-thrillers.html

  

You can also read my Counterterrorism magazine interview with Nelson DeMille via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2017/03/my-q-with-nelson-demille-author-of.html 

My Q&A With Nelson DeMille, Author Of 'The Lion's Game' And 'The Panther'

The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International published my Q&A with Nelson DeMille, the author of The Lion's Game, The Panther and other crime, espionage and terrorism thrillers.

You can read the interview via the below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge.

My Philadelphia Inquirer Review Of Nelson DeMille's 'Radiant Angel'

My review of Nelson DeMille's thriller Radiant Angel appears in the Philadelphia Inquirer today.

In Radiant Angel, Nelson DeMille's latest thriller, John Corey targets the resurgent Russians, in a change of pace from the usual Middle Eastern terrorists. Corey, a tough, wisecracking, and irreverent retired NYPD homicide detective turned contract federal agent, has left the New York Anti-Terrorist Task Force for the Diplomatic Surveillance Group. He and his team are assigned to follow a Russian named Vasily Petrov, who is posing as a diplomat. Petrov is a colonel in the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service that took over espionage duties from the old KGB.

"Col. Petrov lives in a big high-rise in the upscale Riverside section of the Bronx," narrator Corey tells us. "The building, which we call the 'plex - short for complex - is owned and wholly occupied by the Russians who work at the U.N. and the Russian Consulate, and it is a nest of spies. The 'plex itself, located on a high hill, sprouts more antennas than a garbage can full of cockroaches."

... DeMille, a former U.S. Army officer who saw combat in Vietnam, did extensive research on seaport security for this thriller; a threat to New York Harbor is key to the plot. Radiant Angel is fast-paced and exciting, with amusing commentary and sarcastic asides from Corey. He's a loose cannon. But as DeMille has said in interviews, sometimes, a loose cannon is the only way to win a battle.

You can read the rest of the review below:

Note: You can click on the above to enlarge. 

My Washington Times Review Of Nelson DeMille's New Thriller The Panther

The Washington Times published my review of Nelson DeMille's new thriller The Panther today.

John Corey, a tough, wisecracking NYPD detective-turned-contract federal-agent for the New york Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is back on the hunt in Nelson DeMille's new thriller, “The Panther.”

Corey, who hunted down Asad Khalil, a Libyan terrorist called “the Lion” in an earlier thriller, is on the trail of another big cat. Bulus ibn al-Darwish — aka “al-Numair,” or “the Panther” — is a high-ranking alQaeda operative who was born and raised in Perth Amboy, N.J.

Operating in Yemen, the Panther is suspected of being one of the masterminds who planned and executed the bombing of the USS Cole. He is also wanted for the attack on a French oil tanker and other terrorist attacks, kidnappings and murders.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/dec/7/big-game-terrorist-hunting/