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In response to
"Spoils"
by
Beryllium
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Ah. You might enjoy this, NYT reviewer hates Nelson DeMille's John Corey character but can't put his latest book down.
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The New Nelson DeMille Novel Is Engaging — and Enraging
The mystery driving “The Maze” is a fascinating one, but the main character? He’s an insufferable jerk.
By Sarah Weinman
Oct. 7, 2022
Some crime novels I adore or loathe instantly; others provoke more tepid reactions. Few, however, cause me to turn each page in a state of utter bewilderment, wondering why I should keep going, but also made me incapable of stopping. This was the precise reaction that THE MAZE (Scribner, 415 pp., $30), Nelson DeMille’s eighth novel featuring the ex-N.Y.P.D. detective (and more recently, ex-federal agent) John Corey.
We’re in Corey’s head the whole time, and it’s an exhausting place to be. As an ex-lover (he refers to her as a “former fornicator”) tells him, “You buck authority, and you don’t like rules and regulations.” No kidding. When he meets a young woman for the first time, he thinks she “needs a good spanking.” He’s also wont to make “politically incorrect jokes about the world of Islam.”
When Corey actually investigates the crime at the heart of the book — one clearly inspired by the Gilgo Beach killings of several sex workers, replete with corruption at every level of law enforcement — the set pieces are genuinely thrilling. But to get there requires sitting with a man who’s so repellent that I constructed an alternate narrative universe where the women are fully fleshed-out humans, objectifying Corey to the extreme.
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