The Lion's Game

April 15, 1986–the USA bombed Libya in retaliation of a bombing 10 days before of a nightclub in West Berlin, placing the blame on Qaddafi. I was just about to graduate from high school, so even though I was a very well-informed high schooler, I didn‘t remember this event. The bombing is the motivating factor for the book‘s chief villain, Asad Khalil, the “Lion,” to come to America to kill the pilots who manned the bombing raid that killed his family. Former NYPD homicide detective, now FBI contractor, John Corey is among the first on the scene when a plane full of peacefully dead arrive at JFK airport. From that moment on, Corey thinks he‘s the only one who can stop the Lion before he kills everyone on that bombing run and show more does everything in his power to do so, along with his FBI partner Kate Mayfield. Nonstop action, this book educates the reader about a Libyan‘s perspective of the bombing. Corey is a smart-mouthed tough guy who doesn‘t hold back his bigotry about Middle Easterners, so he‘s hardly a sympathetic good guy. Asad, of course, is a brutal killer. It‘s the fact that this is a twisty non-stop thriller that makes it so good. The author did extensive research on the inside for a case like this, and it feels real. It does end on something of a cliffhanger that readers had to wait 10 long years for a sequel. Fortunately, I was able to read them back to back. show less

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 is
its 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 show more 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. show less

I liked this book, but I liked Plum Island better. This book split its time pretty equally between hero John Corey and the villain, Asad Khalil, which I think is what dropped this book a star. I find the Corey character so compelling that when the chapter switched from his pov to Khalil's I found myself a little disappointed, even though Khalil's chapters were interesting in their own right... Their only problem was that they weren't about Corey, if that makes sense. Anyway, I still found the book to be a page turner, and really enjoyed it, and am really looking forward to the next book in the series.


Oh, and the terrorist/pre9-11 world trade center references were just a little creepy...

Abandoning this book. I just don't have time in my life right now for this kind of detail. I think this is the kind of book that can appeal to people who watch 12 episode miniseries on Elizabethan England, except it's nominally a 'thriller,' so to be honest, I'm not sure who the target population is. People who are really, really good at waiting for a payoff, I suppose. My mom enjoyed it, but she's recently retired and was having trouble filling her time, so that's another possible population (we solved that by getting a 6 month old dog).

It starts wonderfully; snappy pace, ironic dialogue, intriguing plot and decent character creation. John Corey, who was apparently a hundred times more oinky in [b:Plum Island|33810|Plum Island (John show more Corey, #1)|Nelson DeMille|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388460212s/33810.jpg|2309] has toned down the sexism. There's a paragraph aside discussing how he hasn't hit on anyone at his new job with the Feds, and how he's discovered life as a confidante for female co-workers. He still tries to provoke response with an assortment of ethnic jokes, however, but it's pretty clear he's doing it to be an ass and to show a rebellious spirit, not because he actually cares about someone's ethnicity. I found much of his commentary to be a great mix of hilarious and insightfulness.

Once the initial series of incidents occur, the pace slows down significantly. The Fed side is taken up with meetings, analysis and flirting between Corey and another member of the team. To compensate, DeMille follows the terrorist, the 'Lion' Asad, through a pivotal moment in his upbringing and through following exploits in the U.S. I had a fair amount of trouble with his perspective, because while I found it started well, it segued into zealot/sociopath rather quickly. I'm definitely a fan of subtle and nuance, and while I would have expected a 700 page book to have time to give some development to understanding a terrorist, he ends up being single-note psychopath.

I found myself skimming large swaths to see if there was any improvement in pacing or narrative, but there really wasn't. I decided to abandon because there really is so much more on Mount TBR to try rather than wading through this.

MrsJoseph nailed the issue in the status comments below, that this is a 300-400 page thriller trapped in a 700 page book. My bookmark was trapped at page 279 when I quit. show less

I was skeptical at first about this book even though I love DeMille's John Corey series. I didn't think I wanted to read anymore war and mayhem, but was pleasantly surprised with how quick this book read. It is funny, exciting, and thought provoking. But I won't say more since virtually everything else would spoil the many surprises in the book.

2.75 stars. i am really not a fan of demille's macho posturing that he puts his main heroes through, and this book starts out with a lot of it. happily, our main hero isn't the focus of the entire book, and so we're spared this for enough of the book to get the reader involved and interested. (in fact, demille's focus on the bad guy for a while is what made me realize that he's actually not a bad writer, like i've been accusing him of for years. so he's choosing to write his characters so incredibly…awfully. i'm not sure if this is better or worse.) by the time we're back to focusing on john corey, his over the top machismo isn't as annoying - or maybe is more easily overlooked - because the story has grabbed you. of course, as per show more demille's usual, it's a story that could have (and should have) been written in half the pages he took, but this is still one of the better books of his that i've read. he still has no idea how to write about relationships between men and women (truly, it's laughable), and the macho stuff will always get my goat in his books, but the story is an interesting one, and the chase and the climax definitely kept me reading. i really wanted to know if and how they would capture the bad guy, how it would go down, and for whatever other reason i can't explain just found myself really wanting to keep reading. and it is interesting to note what's changed and what's stayed the same politically (and from the perspective of international terror) since he wrote this. show less

This book ran hot and cold for me. The hot--a cleverly crafted plot and gripping action scenes. The cold--extended, boring, pedestrian dialogue in between the action scenes and a flippant protagonist whose attempts at humor fall flat. If DeMille had pared 30% from the book, it would be a 100% better read.