Latest from DeMille brings terror home to America

Nelson DeMille

February 17, 2000
Web posted at: 3:26 PM EST (2026 GMT)

By CNN.com Books Editor Jonathan D. Austin

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Nelson DeMille's new novel "The Lion's Game" kicks off with a jet landing quietly at New York's JFK International Airport. Of course, maybe it's so quiet because everyone aboard the flight from Paris is dead. Everyone, that is, except for Asad Khalil, a Lybian man who claimed to want to defect to the United States. And he can't be found.

His disappearance turns into a "classical chase and escape; a little bit like "Day of the Jackal," says DeMille, who is best known for a popular string of intelligent thrillers including "The General's Daughter," "The Charm School," and "Plum Island."

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"It stars the same character from 'Plum Island,' John Corey, who's NYPD," DeMille said during an interview with CNN.com. "At the end of 'Plum Island' he was forcibly retired, and so he's in a new incarnation here; he's working for the Joint Terrorist Task Force, though in the book I call it the Anti-terrorist Task Force."

Why is the Big Apple's terrorism unit involved? Because Khalil is setting off on a devious, murderous trek across the United States to avenge victims of the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya.

"This man has been trained for 14 years, since he was a boy, and he's full of hate and he's full of revenge, and he's gotten his hands on the list of the eight pilots who bombed that particular compound, and he's going to kill every one of them," DeMille explains. "He goes about killing three or four before Corey gets the connection."

Weaving a fictional thriller around a true event helps catch the reader's attention, DeMille says. "It's best to use something historical, something real, otherwise you get total fantasy. In 'The General's Daughter,' I based the story loosely on an incident that happened at West Point. It wasn't a murder or a rape, but it was a sexual abuse of one of the new female students.

"It's not always necessary" to tie the tale to current events, DeMille said. "I don't always do it. But if something important has happened, and it hasn't been resolved, like this bombing raid on Libya ... I just postulate that."

Such postulating has been very good for DeMille. His first book, the 1978 "By the Rivers of Babylon," was a searing thriller centered around the unending Arab-Israeli conflict. The 1981 "Cathedral" offered an offshoot of the IRA taking New York City by siege on St. Patrick's Day, and the 1985 "Word of Honor" had a civilian reactivated to the Army 15 years after he left Vietnam in an investigation intended to restore military honor after My Lai.

As DeMille puts it: "It's good to stay as close to real life as you can, and then kind of dress it up."

But with that said, DeMille's next book "is not based on anything that's really happened."

"I said 'Word of Honor' would be my first and last Vietnam novel, but as it turn out, I went back to Vietnam two years ago and I was fascinated by the place, so I said maybe there was one more book." That book will focus on a veteran who returns to Vietnam 32 years after the war.

DeMille say his Army service in Vietnam "is what probably got me started writing."

"I went through a war and I was a combat infantry officer, so I said, 'I'm going to write the great American war novel.' That got me to the typewriter. I didn't get the novel published, but it got me into the process."

That personal war experience appears to give DeMille's best-selling thrillers a solid grounding in reality.

"I wasn't totally traumatized by the war," he says. "I can't say we didn't see a lot of combat, we did; the First Cav (1st Cavalry Division) saw a lot of combat. It wasn't the worst experience, but it certainly wasn't the best."

And the war did answer some critical questions for him. "I grew up real fast. I was a 25-year-old suburban kid from Long Island. I came back feeling, 'I did my duty and I did it well.' It's also nice finding out that you aren't a coward. It's nice knowing you can be shot at and still command men."

And what if his writing hadn't been successful? What if 'Babylon' hadn't been auctioned to Harcourt Brace for $412,000?

"I was still young enough then to do some of the things that I wanted to do. I was fascinated by the world of intelligence, the idea of exploring.

"I wouldn't say money was the final goal, but it had to be either money or some incredibly fascinating job... I didn't want to work in an office. I tried it and it wasn't me. I would have rather dug ditches outside than be an office worker."

"The Lion's Game" is published by Warner Books, which is owned by Time Warner, the parent company of CNN.

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