Why Nelson DeMille’s The Maze Was An Amazing Mid-Summer Gift

The most amazing mid-summer gift fell into my lap last week. Yes, of course, it was a book. Not just any old book though. It’s the latest from Nelson DeMille. Titled The Maze, it’s scheduled for release in October.

I’ve been waiting for it for a while since its protagonist is retired NYPD homicide detective, John Corey who was introduced to us in 1997 in DeMille’s bestseller, Plum Island. That thriller was set on the North Fork as is my own latest thriller, Fool Her Once. In The Maze, DeMille was expected to bring John Corey back to the North Fork. To say I was waiting impatiently would be an understatement.

Then, out of the blue, I received an email from NetGalley, a service that provides advance digital review copies, aka galley proofs, from authors and publishers to bloggers and book reviewers. Regular consumers too can request books but are not always likely to be approved — like I was not several years back before my blog took off and before Fool Her Once was published.

Total Surprise

Anyway, there it was, an unexpected, unsolicited email from NetGalley with the subject line: “Read Nelson DeMille’s The Maze now.” I downloaded the review copy into my Kindle immediately.

Then, I cleared my schedule for the day. Which means I interrupted my clean-up and re-vamp of this website (It’s going very slowly which is why my blogs are a little sporadic lately!)

Also, I temporarily set aside The Last Goodbye, the novel I was in the middle of reading (Sorry, Eldon, I’ll be coming right back to it!) I cooked hardboiled eggs for lunch (10 minutes!) and settled into my summer reading nook.

Hooked From The Start

Nelson had me hooked me from the very first sentence of Chapter One: “You can’t drink all day unless you start in the morning.” Yesssss!!!

John Corey is back in all his retirement glory, sitting with a beer on the back porch of his uncle’s North Fork house overlooking Long Island’s Great Peconic Bay.

Of course, the idyll doesn’t last because pretty soon his former lover, Beth Penrose, a detective in the Suffolk County homicide squad stops by and co-opts him into helping solve a string of murders close to home. The nine victims are mostly sex workers who have been found on deserted marshland on Fire Island, the barrier island on the Great South Bay.

Sound familiar? It should –if you’ve been following the real-life Gilgo Beach murders either in the news or as a dramatized version on HBOMax. The real life murders are, as of today, unsolved. DeMille in his Author’s Note acknowledges that The Maze is inspired by these real-life murders.

Undercover

In The Maze, Corey is persuaded to go undercover as a consultant to a sketchy private security outfit located in Riverhead. As a sideline, the private security firm organizes “Thirsty Thursdays” — social events featuring exotic dancers and escorts for a slew of well-connected Suffolk County  politicians, judges and high-level cops and law enforcement officials like the Chief of Police, Ed Conners and the county District Attorney.

Any one of these could be the serial killer, but one of the chief suspects is the Police Chief himself who in The Maze has ordered his homicide squad not to co-operate with the FBI; and who has a history of abusing women including sex workers, and carries a bag of snuff porn and bondage paraphernalia in his SUV, with his misdeeds being covered up by — maybe the D.A. himself?

Based on Real Life?

Again. Sound familiar??? It certainly should to any reader of this blog or anyone who has read Jimmy The King, the real-life, true crime account of how Suffolk County Police Chief James Burke and Suffolk County District Attorney, Tom Spota were convicted and sentenced to jail terms. Burke for the bodily assault on a suspect –who stole a bag (containing porn and dildos) from Burke’s SUV –and Spota for helping him cover it up.

Author/journalist Gus Garcia-Roberts steers clear of certain media reports and accounts which raise a suspicion that former police chief Burke was involved in some way in the Gilgo Beach murders other than not co-operating with FBI profilers who tried to assist.

But The Maze Is Fiction

So, what will John Corey uncover in this spine-chilling, fictional thriller where he finds himself in “society’s worst nightmare” –where the law and order guys are themselves criminals? That’s the question that made me race to the finish of The Maze.

On the way, I revelled in the return of the brash, sometimes politically incorrect, John Corey. I loved him from the very first Corey book, Plum Island. Okay. Okay. Corey may sound like a bit of a throwback sometimes in this book, but his sardonic, often self-deprecating humor and wit has always made me laugh. His inner monologue which runs alongside his first-person narration is deliciously-paced and brilliant. I could have enjoyed this novel just for John Corey’s banter and dialog alone.

Full Disclosure

In the interests of full disclosure: Nelson DeMille wrote an author  blurb for the cover of my very first thriller, Scandal. That was back in 1996, as anyone who has spent any time on this website knows. But, even before then, I was a total DeMille fan after reading Gold Coast (1990) The General’s Daughter (1992), and Spencerville (1994)

Then, came Plum Island (1997) which I referenced in a CrimeReads article after Fool Her Once was published. In that article, I wrote about the paucity of thrillers set on the North Fork of Long Island.

None of this has any bearing on the fact that my review of The Maze is honest and unbiased and my very own. I’m sorry the rest of DeMille’s fans have to wait till October to read this one.