I was not familiar with DeMille’s writing (gross oversight) but downloaded The Lion’s Game and have been listening while mowing, showering, driving, doing the dishes, etc. It’s a real pageturner, so to speak. But what makes it really fun isits wisecracking hero, John Corey, and the very talented,
low-key reader, Scott Brick. Corey has all these great lines I wish I had thought of. Stepping up to the airline ticket counter, he is asked, “Do you have a reservation?” “Lots of them,” he replies, “especially about taking this flight.” The agent is not amused. Arriving late at the gate, Corey boards
the plane and is told to take any seat, as they are
leaving in a hurry. “How about that gentleman’s,” he asks. “An empty seat is the flight attendant’s reply.” And you should hear his off-color, politically incorrect remarks during the FBI briefings. Hysterical.
But I get ahead of myself. Corey, recently recovered from being shot while working as a detective for the NYPD, has been assigned to the FBI and its anti-terrorist investigatory unit. His first assignment is to help pick up a defecting Libyan agent. The first clue that something is wrong is
when the tower receives no radio contact from the fully loaded 747, which then proceeds to land without using its reverse thrusters after a near-miss on final approach. The emergency squad finds everyone on the plane dead but one, the novel’s evil assassin, Asad Khalil, who kills the first squad member and easily slips off the plane dressed as a baggage handler in the confusion at the security area where the plane had been towed. Asad (Arabic for “lion”) proceeds to travel
throughout the United States methodically killing all the pilots who had participated in the raid against Moammar Gadhafi’s residence and buildings on April 15, 1986, in which Asad’s family had been killed. Asad is brilliant and fearless, careful to erase all traces of his passage, eliminating even fellow Libyans who help him. The
FBI, CIA and ATTF (Anti-Terrorist Task Force) are clueless as to motive and his whereabouts.
The clues begin to accumulate and finally Corey begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together. As is not atypical for spy novels, there are conflicting motives on the part of the agencies, and we learn that the CIA has its own plans for
Asad. In the end, none of them is smart enough for Asad, and I suspect he may surface in a later novel with John Corey.
Too bad the FBI and CIA didn’t read this book before September 11. Perhaps they might have been less clueless.
