Asad pretends to defect, handcuffed to agents aboard a 747 bound for JFK, and he proves to be a worse seatmate than a siding salesman. Corey and his ATTF colleagues (most conspicuously the FBI's sexy Kate Mayfield, Corey's match in badinage and bad-guy busting) strive to halt Asad's methodical yet unpredictable bloodbath. Skillfully, DeMille alternates chapters told from Asad's and Corey's points of view. DeMille did his authenticity homework: when we're not savoring his gift for wiseacre dialogue in the Corey-Kate chapters, we're sweating alongside Asad on his ghastly, ingenious jihad.

The New York Times put DeMille's social satire on a par with Edith Wharton's, and he's great on the colliding folkways of the feuding, mutually doublecrossing crimebuster institutions. Naturally, he's on the side of the regular-guy flatfoots. "Cops sit on their asses and flip through their folders," he writes. "Feds sit on their derrieres and peruse their dossiers." And the CIA gets it in the shorts, satirically speaking. One deplores the mass murderers, but the book's real bad guys wear the priciest suits.

DeMille reportedly has a $25 million book contract. With fast, funny, absorbing thrillers like The Lion's Game, he's earned it. --Tim Appelo

Product Description
Detective John Corey, last seen in Plum Island, must somehow capture the worlds most dangerous terrorista young Arab known as The Lionwho will stop at nothing in his quest for revenge against America for bombing Libya and killing his family. Filled with unrelenting suspense and shocking plot twists at every turn, The Lions Game is a heart-stopping race against time and Nelson DeMilles most riveting thriller yet. DeMilles most recent novel, Plum Island (Warner, 1997), was a #1 New York Times bestseller for 5 weeks and hit every major national bestseller list, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and San Francisco Chronicle. It netted nearly 500,000 hardcover and more than one million paperback copies. Spencerville (Warner, 1994) netted over 200,000 hardcover copies and has over one million paperback copies in print. The Generals Daughter (Warner, 1992) will be released as a major motion picture starring John Travolta with a screenplay by William Goldman (Absolute Power, All the Presidents Men). There are more than 30 million copies of DeMilles books in print worldwide. Also available as a Time Warner AudioBook.