May 1, 2019
Capt. Kyle Mercer of Delta Force has vanished from his post in Afghanistan, and a video reveals that he's been captured by the Taliban. But did he desert first? A second video suggests that he did, and when he is later spotted in Venezuela, Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor of the Criminal Investigation Division are tasked with winging their way south to bring him back, whether handcuffed or in a body bag. With a 300,000-copy first printing.
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Starred review from July 29, 2019
This outstanding thriller from bestseller DeMille (The Cuban Affair) and his screenwriter son centers on a search for an Army deserter who has fled to Venezuela after escaping duty in Afghanistan under strange circumstances. On the hunt for Delta Force Capt. Kyle Mercer are Scott Brodie, a hardened ex-soldier with impulsive, rogue tendencies, and Maggie Taylor, a cunning by-the-book Army cop who does her best to rein in Brodie’s urges, both investigative and sexual. Brodie, the senior officer, quickly suspects his commanders aren’t telling him everything about Mercer; his desertion may have less to do with disobedience than his knowing too much about military atrocities in Afghanistan. Nonetheless, Brodie and Taylor track Mercer to a jungle hideout far outside Caracas, where he’s training a group of mercenaries with the apparent backing of President Maduro. In typical DeMille fashion, the last hundred pages move along like a ballistic missile, exploding in a satisfying finale on a remote airstrip. DeMille and son provide it all in this rumble through the jungle—authentic detail, lively dialogue, a vividly drawn setting, and an exhilarating plot. Agents: Jenn Joel and Sloan Harris, ICM Partners.
August 15, 2019
Army investigators track a deserter into the Venezuelan jungle. DeMille's last thriller (The Cuban Affair, 2017) successfully incorporated Cuba's precarious internal politics into the plot, and this one--the first he's written with his son Alex--attempts to do the same with Venezuela's faltering existence. Kyle Mercer, a high-value Delta Force soldier, deserted his unit in Afghanistan, was captured by the Taliban, and then escaped his captors. He has been spotted in Venezuela, and Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, investigators for the Army's Criminal Investigation Division, are dispatched to bring him back to stand trial. This seems straightforward, but there are questions: Why did Mercer desert? Is the U.S. government wholly determined to have him brought back alive? And more immediately and practically, how can the CID team function in the failed state of Venezuela? The situation in Venezuela is painstakingly delineated, but it remains an element of the setting, never rising to the level of a plot device as Cuban political tensions did in the earlier novel; the result is a dreary repetition of the facts of life in Caracas: bribery and violence, violence and bribery. Brodie and Taylor are fortunate to secure the services of Luis, a Venezuelan driver who is a likable but somewhat predictable character, and with his help they are able to discover that Mercer has left Caracas and is now in the jungle in the south. The doughty investigators track him there, learn the ugly truth about his defection and about the real nature of Brendan Worley, the purported attaché in Caracas. There is much to like about this story: Brodie's and Taylor's attempts to avoid a growing attraction; a useful discussion of the legal definition of "desertion"; some of the descriptions of the geography of southern Venezuela; and the reminder of what those in power will do to avoid embarrassment. But the story is too long and lacks dramatic variety, asking over and over the same questions: Where is Mercer? Why did he do it? Who wants him dead rather than alive? Too much and too little.
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September 1, 2019
The mystery here concerns Captain Kyle Mercer, a special-ops officer in the army's Delta Force, the elite of the elite. Why has he gone rogue, deserting his post in Afghanistan and sending out grisly videos of himself beheading Taliban members? And where is this "most infamous Army deserter since Benedict Arnold"? These are the questions put to army Criminal Investigation Division detectives Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor, the leads in this often-dazzling and occasionally irritating collaboration between Nelson DeMille and his filmmaker son, Alex. The trail leads to Venezuela, and too much time is spent painting a sorrowful picture of this beautiful country, where "the worst elements of humanity had defeated civilization." For a time, the authors' jaunty, gleeful style, which seems to invite you to have as much fun reading the book as they had writing it, carries the text. But midway through comes a series of chapters that each promise confrontations and resolutions that never happen. Blessedly, an action-charged finale brings everything home. It comes with the spooky observation that a secret world is slowly taking over that other world, our world.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)