I love Nelson DeMille. The Gold Coast and Charm School are favorites of mine and the Generals' Daughter is another great book. I had been hearing a lot of buzz on the radio and such about the follow up to this book called The Lion. Since I had never read this one, I wanted to give it a go before reading the sequel.
It is a very intruiging story about a terrorist and the FBI agents working to stop him. Unlike John Updikes' The Terrorist, I find it almost impossible to relate in any way to the Lion. DeMille goes off on this tangent to explain what "made" the Lion choose to be a terrorist and he talks about the 1986 bombing of Libya. Of course, the Lion's family was among those that were killed in the attacks on Gaddafi.
I remember 1986. I remember what inspired that air raid - the West German bombing of a disco killing 2 American service men and wounding two hundred others. Then of course there was the Gulf of Sidra incident and the now infamous "line of death" comments by Gaddafi and let's not forget how Gaddafi supporting the killing of hundreds of US Marines stationed as Peace keepers in Lebannon just a few years before.
No question about it, DeMille is a master story teller but this American has no interst in sympathizing in any way with a terrorist like the Lion. I won't be reading the sequel. What a disappointment really.
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