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If you want to dominate the best-seller list the way Nelson DeMille consistently does, you have to be more adept than the Weather Channel at telling which way the wind is blowing.
Take DeMille's new thriller, "Wild Fire,'' in which a wealthy and well-connected patriot is trying to trigger a secret government contingency plan that will nuke the Arab world into oblivion.
The plot reflects the growing mood of futility DeMille has sensed in this country. "I think it speaks to a lot of people's frustration at how a huge nuclear power, the last superpower left in the world, could have its lives changed so much by a handful of Third World terrorists," the author says from his home in Garden City, N.Y.
"I've seen a lot on the Internet about why we should bomb the Middle East. I don't subscribe to that, but I understand the frustration," DeMille says. "We're involved in a knife fight with the other side and we have a pistol in our pocket we're not using."
Waging a lonely and desperate battle to stave off "Wild Fire's'' holocaust are John Corey, the former NYPD detective working for the government's anti-terror task force, and his FBI agent wife, Kate Mayfield. This cool, wise-cracking couple are the Nick and Nora Charles of the Osama era.
This marks the fourth outing for Corey, a maverick lawman first introduced in DeMille's 1997 breakout novel, "Plum Island.'' "He's a character created for the times," the author says. "If he was an NYPD homicide detective, I don't know if I'd be that interested in him. But after 9/11, a lot of federal money became available to hire retired and active-duty cops. With his job at the ATTF, Corey becomes the James Bond of the age of terrorism."
DeMille likes to break new ground with each book, but his readers' enthusiastic response persuaded him to keep Corey on speed dial.
"Writers don't realize that the character is more popular than they are. All my fan mail after `Plum Island' had to do with John Corey, John Corey," DeMille says. "I knew I had to bring him back.
"Once in a while writers get lucky in terms of a character. Someone once said that if Arthur Conan Doyle hadn't hit on Sherlock Holmes, no one would know (Doyle's) name today."
Of course, the book has more going for it than its acerbic protagonist. `"Wild Fire' was so gripping," novelist Susan Isaacs writes via BlackBerry, "that I resented the few hours I had to sleep so I'd be able to get back to reading. It has a brilliantly thought-out plot and wonderful characters (including a great, strong dame)."
A fair part of the $5 million to $6 million that DeMille generates from each timely thriller comes from foreign sales. Isn't he concerned that a book that explores the option of wiping out our Islamic brethren might tank in the Mideast?
"I'm not translated into Arabic," he says. "The Arab world is a separate entity. You can't get American books (published) there with even the mildest sexual innuendo. A man and a woman sitting at a table having a drink is enough to get a book banned in Saudi Arabia. In the Arab Middle East, our culture has not penetrated at all."
For a writer who prides himself on his cutting-edge plots, DeMille turns out his books in a curiously old-fashioned manner, filling piles of yellow legal pads with the jottings of No. 1 pencils. "I never learned how to type," he says. "Still can't."
Perhaps that's not surprising for a guy who followed the rugged path of experience to his calling, rather than the landscaped academic trail that so many modern writers have taken.
DeMille grew up with three brothers in the working-class Long Island suburb of Elmont. A jock in high school, he attended Hofstra University before dropping out in the midst of the Vietnam War.
"That was pretty dumb," he says. "I don't know what I was thinking. I left school in January. In March I had a draft notice."
Although it meant an extra year of service, DeMille enrolled in the Army, serving as a second lieutenant in a rifle company with the 1st Cavalry during the heated combat of the 1968 Tet offensive.
"It was scary, but I grew up right away," he says. "You're never the same again. I think you say, `If I can do that, I can do anything.' Bottom line: I was grateful for the experience."
He returned to the States, resolved to follow in the combat boots of Norman Mailer and others and turn his battlefield experiences into "the great American war novel."
Instead, he worked for a time as an insurance investigator and then ghost-wrote a few pulpy police titles before selling his first thriller, "By the Rivers of Babylon,'' in 1978.
With his knack for crackerjack stories, futuristic technology, ruthless villains and outsize heroes, DeMille met with growing success. "What makes him popular," novelist Harlan Coben says, "is he does it all. There's suspense, large themes, humor, and the main character is a guy you want to hang out with - like Nelson himself."
The old literary lion is still learning new tricks. "I tended to overwrite. Now I'm trying to underwrite," he says. "It's a result of the times. People are not reading long Victorian novels. It's one of the reasons James Patterson is successful. He writes short sentences, short paragraphs, short chapters. I think that makes books work better."
DeMille has to stay flexible. At 63, he has just become a father for the third time. "This baby is so much fun," he beams. "It's bringing back a lot of good memories."
The author has two grown children, Lauren and Alex, with his first wife, Ellen Wasserman. He plans to wed Sandy Dillingham, mother of the newborn James, in June, when his divorce from his second wife is official.
DeMille makes it a policy not to inject his own political views into his thrillers. "I'm really not taking a side," he says. "With these kind of books, you lose half your audience immediately if you come down as a left-wing writer or a right-wing writer."
But he does admit to being fed up with the way our country is vilified around the globe. "I would say it's time to disengage from the world, be an isolationist," he says. "If we can't do anything right, we should withdraw, seal the borders."
Seal the borders? Sounds like another sure best-seller.
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Mclatchy-Tribune News Service.