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Being pigeonholed to a genre or a classification is a necessary hazard authors have to live with. While fans of the genre will like them anyway, there’s always the danger that many finer aspects of such books are missed out in the jacket blurbs, thus shooing away potential readers who may be biased against the genre.
Bestselling author Nelson DeMille’s books traditionally nestle in the thriller shelves, especially closer to military or international spy/detective books. If you happened to read ‘The General’s Daughter’, which was adapted onto the big screens with John Travolta in the lead, you wouldn’t greatly disagree with such a classification, while a more discerning reader would find the novel’s psychological element and the focus on human behaviour more fascinating. ‘The Gold Coast’ and its sequel ‘The Gate House’ are quite a different species altogether.
Military thrillers, especially those which are a series, run the risk of repetition and boring familiarity. And the post-9/11 international espionage from the US has almost always been stereotypical and focused on the Middle East. There’s also the risk of simplistic plots and black-and-white characters, resulting in predictable outcomes.
A minefield of deceit
DeMille didn’t quite swing his lens elsewhere entirely, but even the novels with Middle Eastern themes such as The Lion’s Game (2000), The Lion (2010) and The Panther (2012) were based in Libya and Yemen, countries totally unknown before Gaddafi’s fall and the recent Houthi insurgency.
The Deserter, which DeMille has co-authored with his screenwriter son Alex, has a similarly interesting setting — Venezuela, an oil rich country that slipped into political instability following the death of its charismatic leader Hugo Chavez.
Military CID officers Scott Brodie and Maggie Taylor are sent to the South American country in search of a US army captain who goes missing after a two-year captivity with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Besides the vague account of a former army colleague, they have nothing to work with. Clues about the officer’s precise whereabouts come with a great risk.
With the knowledge that they are caught in a minefield of deceit and clashing motives, the duo have second thoughts about going ahead with the mission, but the uncertainty does not stop them from plunging right into the hazardous rainforests to find the captain who has a lot to answer.
A page turner peppered with DeMille’s trademark wisecracks and twists fashioned in the labyrinth of close-to-real situations, the real deal is in its characters. They cross the lines between the right and the wrong in the shady world of intelligence, second-guessing the motives of everyone.