Wild Fire: a novel by Nelson De Mille

Good entertainment***

I have long been a fan of Nelson De Mille's novels. This one is entertaining but not one of his best. This novel is in some respects a sequel to Nightfall which ended on September 11, 2001, as Detective John Corey was approaching the World Trade Center for a morning meeting to discuss the mysterious downing of an airliner off Long Island some time previously. We never get to know whether Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield, are correct in their suspicions that the plane had been brought down by a terrorist act. This is dwarfed by the events of September 11.

Wild Fire takes place over a weekend in October 2002, a year after 9/11. As Corey is leaving for the weekend he meets a fellow member of the Anti-Terrorism Task Force, Henry Muller, who has been dispatched to spend the weekend to conduct surveillance of the Custer Club lodge in upstate New York wher some very highly-connected folks are meeting to discuss a plot that would trigger Project Wild Fire. Wild Fire is a mandatory nuclear response to terroist nuclear action in the USA. Under Wild Fire major cities thoughout the Muslim world would be destroyed.

Muller is captured and observes the discussions of the plot by Bain Maddox and his cohorts. So we learn the plan up front. The rest of the novel deals with the actions of Corey and Kate who are sent to check out the disappearance of Muller and report back. Corey goes "off reservation" determined to get to the bottom of their colleague's disappearance and subsequent "accidental death".

Corey is reckless and tenacious and pursues matters to a hair-raising conclusion, saving two US cities from nuclear destruction in the process.

The novel is filled with Corey's wise-cracking and sarcastic comments about various operations and agencies of the good ole' USA. All-in-all, a good read but not on a par with some of De Mille's best work. My favourite remains Up Country, a novel about an investigator's return to modern Viet Nam which is great literature.