Book Review: The Lion by Nelson DeMille
Has there been a bad book from Nelson DeMille? I’ve read them all and can say they are all good. Maybe, it’s his cynicism or his biting humor or his inner voice that says all the things we would be thinking if we were him faced with his situations. The humor even comes across in his emails. I received this “personal” email from him just today (the email was addressed to me and the subject line said “a note from Nelson DeMille.”):
First, the good news: The Lion debuted at #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. Bad news: it was actually tied for #1 with Stieg Larsson’s, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest. I don’t mind sharing the top spot with another author, but Stieg Larsson didn’t even bother to promote his book. I’ve been breaking my back doing radio, TV, print interviews, and bookstore signings since The Lion was published on June 8. And Larsson has done absolutely nothing to help his publisher publicize his book. To be fair, though, I should mention that Stieg Larsson is dead. Proving once again that some authors will do anything to get out of a book tour.
A good book review asks what was the author trying to accomplish with his book. Sure, we know he was trying to beat out Stieg Larsson and make money. Maybe, DeMille loves to write a good story that will keep you pinned to your seat all the way to DesMoines or sand chair while others are playing pool volleyball. Besides writing a sequel to The Lion’s Game, which has been reissued, maybe he was trying to warn us about an enemy our administration doesn’t want to name.
The antagonist is Amir Khalil, a Libyan who watched from a rooftop as the U.S. under Pres. Reagan sent bombers into Libya and killed all of Khalil’s family. Naturally, he swore revenge! In America, everywhere Khalil looked, was an affront to his Muslim eyes: Fathers that should have been ashamed to have their bathing suit clad wives and daughters, be viewed by other men. The obese Americans driving big SUVs sucking the life blood from the mid-eastern countries. In one passage Demille writes,
In the end, he thought, the greatest armies and navies were nothing when the people believed in nothing. The wealth of an empire corrupted the people and their government, and they were no match for a people who believed in something higher than their bellies, and who worshipped God, not gold.
DeMille’s telling us how much the radical extremists don’t like us; what they would do to us in terrifying detail, if we are not vigilant. Our willingness to shy from the use of Muslim or Islamic terrorists is creating complacency. We are committing cultural suicide when we voluntarily censor our cartoons.  I think I know what DemIle would say about putting up a Mosque on the site of 9/11. On the trail of The Lion, Amir Khalil, is our ex-NYPD cop, Nelson DeMille, thinly disguised as John Corey, married to Kate Mayfield a member of the FBI’s ATTF team.  We get a clue how the powers-that-be treat the press and citizens in this quote,
Since I’ve been in Federal law enforcement. however it’s beem a little easier to mushroom-keeping the press in the dark and feeding them shit-if there’s a national security angle.
I loved the book as much as The Lions Game, but as I read the final page, I wanted to shake my countrymen and yell, “Wake up!”
[…] I wrote a book review about “The Lion” by Nelson DeMille. The Lion is a particularly brutal Libyan killer who came to the U.S. to […]