Wild Fire [Paperback]

Nelson DeMille (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2009

Welcome to the Custer Hill Club--an informal men's club set in a luxurious Adirondack hunting lodge whose members include some of America's most powerful business leaders, military men, and government officials. Ostensibly, the club is a place to gather with old friends, hunt, eat, drink, and talk off-the-record about war, life, death, sex and politics. But one Fall weekend, the Executive Board of the Custer Hill Club gathers to talk about the tragedy of 9/11 and what America must do to retaliate. Their plan is finalized and set into motion.

That same weekend, a member of the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force is reported missing. His body is soon discovered in the woods near the Custer Hill Club's game reserve. The death appears to be a hunting accident, and that's how the local police first report it, but Detective John Corey has his doubts. As he digs deeper, he begins to unravel a plot involving the Custer Hill Club, a top-secret plan known only by its code name: Wild Fire. Racing against the clock, Detective Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, find they are the only people in a position to stop the button from being pushed and chaos from being unleashed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in October 2002, bestseller DeMille's can't-put-it-down fourth thriller to feature ex-NYPD detective John Corey (after 2004's Night Fall) involves an American right-wing plot to suitcase-nuke two U.S. cities. The idea is to provoke an existing government plan called Wild Fire that automatically responds to nuclear terrorism in the homeland with a nuclear attack that will wipe out most of the Middle East. That such a plan probably exists, according to an opening author's note, heightens the tension. Corey and his FBI agent wife, Kate Mayfield, set off to find antiterrorist agent Harry Muller, who has disappeared after being assigned surveillance duties at the Custer Hill Club, a rich man's hunting lodge in upstate New York. John and Kate are a wisecracking, affectionate, deadly duo, with a new resolve born in the tragedy of the World Trade Center bombing. This tour de force of relentless narrative power neither stops nor slows for twists or turns, but charges straight ahead in the face of danger. (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

John Corey, the ex-NYPD detective who now works on a government anti-terrorism task force, returns in this exciting and uncomfortably realistic thriller. Bain Madox, a brilliant and probably insane villain, has hatched a fiendishly clever plot to force the U.S. to launch an all-out nuclear attack against the entire Islamic world. It's up to Corey, with the help of his FBI agent wife, to stop Madox before he can detonate nuclear weapons on American soil. Set in 2002, barely a year after 9/11, the novel presents a what-if scenario that's so plausible we have to remind ourselves that DeMille is making the whole thing up. Or is he? As usual, DeMille appears to have done a ton of research; what sets his thrillers apart from those of some of his competitors is the way he seamlessly incorporates real technology and real government organizations into his stories. It really is tough to tell what parts of his novels are real and what are the products of his imagination. And although Operation Wild Fire, the American nuclear retaliatory strategy that Madox hopes to jump-start, is fictional, DeMille makes us believe that something very like it could and possibly does exist. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing; Reprint edition (October 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446697834
• ISBN-13: 978-0446697835
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.5 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (333 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #385,469 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in New York City in 1943. My father was a Canadian, serving at that time with the American Navy, and my mother was a Brooklyn native, trying to figure out how to grow a Victory Garden for the war effort.

My family moved to Elmont, Long Island, New York in 1947 where my father was a house builder, and my mother was a homemaker raising four boys.
I attended Elmont public schools, played football, ran track, and was on the wrestling team. I graduated Elmont Memorial High School in 1962 and spent the summer at the beach.

I attended Hofstra University, but left before graduation to join the Army in 1966. I served three years in the United States Army as an infantry lieutenant and spent one year in Vietnam as a platoon leader with the First Cavalry Division. You'll see that I used this experience in my novels "Word of Honor" and "Up Country."

After the end of my military service, I returned to Hofstra where I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and History. I married and had two children, Lauren and Alex, and eventually divorced.

I held a series of good and bad jobs between 1970 and 1974, and in that year, for some reason I can't remember, I decided to be a writer. My first books were paperback originals, New York City police detective novels, thankfully all out of print and hard to find.

In 1978, I published my first major novel, "By the Rivers of Babylon," which was a commercial and critical success. Since then, I've written fourteen other novels and had a good time creating my characters John Corey, Ben Tyson (played by Don Johnson in the TNT movie of "Word of Honor"), foxy Emma Whitestone, Paul Brenner (played by John Travolta in the Paramount movie of "The General's Daughter"), sexy Susan Sutter, the never-say-die CIA officer Ted Nash, and my favorite villain, Asad Khalil, a misunderstood Libyan terrorist with unresolved childhood issues.

I am a member of The Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America (past President), American Mensa (thank God I don't have to retake that test), and I hold three honorary doctorate degrees (thank God I didn't have to study for them) from Hofstra University, Long Island University, and Dowling College.
I'm married to the love of my life, Sandy Dillingham, whom I met while I was on a publicity tour in Denver. We have a son, James, two years old, and he's keeping me young.

There's more about me on my website. Thanks for reading about me here, and I hope you enjoy my novels.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not Wild About Wild Fire, June 21, 2007

By 

George Webster, Ph.D., (Orlando, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Wild Fire (Hardcover)

Nelson DeMille's The Lion's Game is one of the best thrillers ever written, but Wild Fire lags far behind. If you are a DeMille fan, this may be exactly the thing you like, but it put me to sleep. First, there is no plot. From the book's dust jacket and early pages, you know that a wealthy oil man wants to wipe out the people of the Middle East by exploding black-market, nuclear bombs in two American cities, triggering a massive nuclear response onto the Middle East from the United States (Project Wild Fire). We know that it won't happen, so we already know that someone will stop it. Second, the book has endless conversation that drags on forever. Third, we again have Detective John Corey and FBI Agent Kate Mayfield investigating the case, but this is not the capable John Corey that we saw in The Lion's Game. This John Corey is a wisecracking buffoon, and an entire book of his one-liners becomes really tiresome. The story's end is exciting and ties up loose ends nicely. This is the first time that I did not like a DeMille book, but I suspect that his next will create the usual excitement.

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Truly a mixed bag... some so good, some... not so much., January 23, 2007

By 

M. Strong (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wild Fire (Hardcover)

Well, this one really has to go into the category of "what might have been." Nelson DeMille starts off so strongly with a well-researched, creative and plausible evil plot that really makes you think about where reality leaves off and fiction begins. As one review states, you get the bulk of the bad guys' plans related to you through the dialog of a long meeting; it does get a bit tedious and that's where things begin to go amiss.

As the reader, you know about 95% of the evil plot about 20% of the way into the book. For the remaining 80% of the book you follow along with DeMille's hero, John Corey, who is implausibly antagonistic to nearly everyone he meets. The character is written to be a street-hardened wiseguy who has seen too much to suffer anyone (fool or otherwise) gladly, but he just comes across as unrealistic and rather annoying. The guy isn't even all right around his wife/boss/partner who wouldn't stay with a guy like this for ten minutes.

To further the problem, you already know the evil plot, so you are forced to endure several hundred pages of the aforementioned Mr. Corey renting cars, booking hotel rooms and hassling service personnel. I'm really not kidding... that makes up the vast majority of this book. Corey also has the classic "hero who has a problem with authority" thing going on steroids. He'd be fired forty six times in real life for doing what he does in this book.

Anyhow, great idea gone to waste. Still worth reading if you like well thought out "what if" scenarios, but if bad writing and implausible characters bother you much you may want to stay away from this one.

123 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another great read by DeMille, November 7, 2006

By 

Michael Bird (Yorba Linda, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wild Fire (Hardcover)

Demille picks up where he left off in Night Fall with Corey still on the job working to stop terrorism against America. The book is fictional, of course, however Demille likes to include real agencies (or close to real agencies) in his work along with real laws, tactics, newspaper headlines and he also includes his biting commentary on how and where the government really screws up in its defense of the country.

Now this book deals with the threat of Islamic terrorism, however unlike Night Fall in which we don't ever find out who exactly the villain was (it may really have been an accident) or The Lion's Game in which the villain was a Libyan terrorist; this work throws us a curve ball with the choice of villain. The irony is strong when the bad guy's plan has a little bit of common sense to it.

Unlike some of the editorial reviews I've seen I don't want to present any spoilers here; so it's a little difficult to argue the pro's and con's of the fictional governmental program called Wild Fire as it's presented in the book. In one of his brief comments on the book, DeMille notes that the idea for Wild Fire is based upon information that can be considered anything from fact to pure fiction, however he believes something similar does exist and if not it should. I agree with him that it should, I'm doubtful, from what I've witnessed that it does.

Of course I strongly recommend DeMille, he's become one of my favorite authors, however I'd like to mention that there are two different kinds of DeMille books. This one is an action thriller, law enforcement based, it reads much like a mystery thriller and presents some interesting and thought provoking things about terrorism and how to deal with stopping it. The other type of DeMille book is powerful literature, The Gold Coast and Word of Honor for instance. Not all readers will necessarily find themselves liking both types of book the same, however they are all well written and enjoyable to read.

If you're new to DeMille and haven't yet read any of Detective John Corey stories, you may want to start earlier and then finish up with this latest book, however it's not really necessarily as each book does stand alone well. If you're not into action thriller books or don't think the law enforcement angle is something you really are hot to read, yet you've heard great things about DeMille try picking up The Gold Coast, it is really one of the best pieces of modern literature I've read yet and perhaps you'll become a fan of the more genre based works.

In any case, if you're a fan of DeMille you'll no doubt get this latest book and enjoy it, if you're not yet a fan, I give a strong recommendation to this author's work.