Down 42nd Street: Sex, Money, and Politics at the Crossroads of the World

Rating:
Summary: Disaster Novel
Review: "Night Fall" thrusts recurring DeMille character and ATTF (Anti-Terrorist Task Force) Agent John Corey into investigating the TWA 800 crash of 1996 five years after the fact. For unexplained reasons, Corey's wife, an FBI Agent that worked the TWA case five years prior, suddenly gets a bee in her bonnet about the whole thing and wants her husband to unofficially reopen the investigation. What follows is a few hundred pages of pure police procedural tedium. Information is repeated ad nauseam and halfway into the novel, it becomes clear that DeMille doesn't have enough story to tell. To make matters worse, Corey's sarcastic and profane sense of humor serves as the most banal of filler. Line after line of calling guys @$$holes gets old after awhile. How is this loser gainfully employed? Much less married? While going through the very boring motions, Corey succeeds in tracking down the lynchpin of the `cover up' using the blandest of techniques. The lynchpin, as is `foreshadowed' in the omnisciently narrated intro, is a amateur sex video shot on the beach with the historical TWA 800 blowing to bits in the background. While one might expect an unsatisfying ending to this bland conspiracy tale, the actual ending is preposterous. In an interview, DeMille forked the credit for the ending over to his son, and admitted that he had written himself into a corner. Bad news Nelson, your parachute didn't open. The entire culmination of Corey's case, and the entire point of the book, explodes into the 2001 9/11 World Trade Center disaster. The witnesses, the evidence, a good chunk of the characters are all up at Windows On the World having breakfast. I don't feel like revealing this is spoiling the book, because the book is terrible. By spoiling the ending, I'm doing you a favor. Historical cases like this are hard to pull off, and none in my memory stand out as working well. Night Fall, however, emulates what it seeks to reveal, a complete and total disaster.

Rating:
Summary: Eh
Review: "Thriller" based on the TWA #800 disaster off the coast of Long Island. You could wait for the mass-market version or you could skip it entirely. I recommend the latter.


Rating:
Summary: Disapointment
Review: A disappointing DeMille book is a rarity but I am afraid this one does not meet the standards of the author's other books. The only other book I felt this way about was The General's Daughter. The ending was a large disappointment. It seemed like he didn't know where to go with the ending and just ended the book.

Rating:
Summary: Shallow
Review: A disappointing DeMille book is a rarity but I am afraid this one does not meet the standards of the author's other books. The most improbable story is really based on some serious research of TVA's flight 800 crash but the entire book is dialogue and for me without substance of characters.

Rating:
Summary: 98% AWESOME...2% makes it 2 stars!
Review: I have read every Nelson DeMille book as soon as it has come out ever since picking up Charm School (<-- UNBELIEVABLE book! 7 stars!) Night Fall really grabbed me early, as do most of DeMille's books. However, the end of the book is a complete cop-out. A MAJOR LET DOWN. I am surprised that he went for this ending. Too bad. Maybe next time he won't take the easy way out.

Rating:
Summary: RIP Nelson Demille
Review: I rarely write reviews, but this book was such an unexpectedly awful and excruciately boring novel by someone who was once the best in the business that I can't help myself. After the uncomparable duo of "Plum Island" and "The Lions Game," the former containing a truly interesting, engrossing, and clever mystery and the latter including some of the most intense action scenes in modern thriller writing, I'm beyond disappointed that DeMille has written two novels in a row, the other being "Up Country," that lack action and suspense and basically involve main characters walking around, looking at things, and asking questions during endless conversations. Those are important components of this type of novel but, as DeMille proved with "Plum Island" and Michael Connelly establishes every time he writes a Bosch book, investigative interviews can effectively be combined with action and suspense scenes to create a superior novel. DeMille has lost that in his most recent works.

"Night Fall" contains mostly dialogue. And make no mistake, DeMille has not lost his excellent ear for realistic dialogue. I'd have given the book two stars alone for the dialogue, but I deducted a star because the dialogue basically involves the same topic and it gets tedious and redundant despite its overall quality. The tediousness and redunancy is excacerbated by the fact that the focus of Corey's investigation is no mystery to anyone who reads the first chapter -- we know the couple's names, what they filmed and saw, and pretty much what they did afterward within about ten pages. Roughly the next four hundred require us to follow Corey around as he slowly but surely learns what we already know. The book has very little to do with the who, how, and why of the TWA 800 incident and more to do with a beach blanket, hotel records, a lens cap, and a video. Why oh why did Demille have to describe for us what the couple saw, then what the tape showed, then have Jill Winslow descibe what the tape showed, and then have Corey watch the tape several times so we could have it described to us several more times, including a strange moment involving Corey, Winslow, and the tape's prefatory sex scene. Couldn't he have been clearer regarding who did it and why and how instead of making sure that he rehashed the tapes's contents four or five times?

I finished this novel only because it's DeMille and he's only let me down once before. I was hoping for a nice payoff in the last hundred pages that would make slogging through the first 350 or so of conversations worth the price of admission to the good stuff. Boy was that a mistake and a waste of time. None of the questions and mysteries raised by the novel are resolved in any way and the book doesn't get interesting for even a second. There's more talking and more talking and Jill meets Kate and they talk and Corey and Jill have themselves a nice little time together in the city and talk and eat and shop and and the only potentially tense scene is described third-hand by Fanelli while he talks to Corey and then is described again third-hand by Kate as she talks to Corey. Worse yet, at this point Corey's investigation is over but people are still just talking and reflecting and ruminating, the sort of stuff that generally happens after a novel's climax to draw out the book a little and bring it to a smooth close. I guess I missed this book's climax, if there was one. Another reader described despair as the reader noticed that DeMille was running out of pages to bring the novel to a satisfying and legitimate close. I completely agree. I was appalled to see that, ten pages before the end, people were still talking and nothing else was happening. At that point, I got a sickening feeling that DeMille was about to betray me and can the ending that he had been building up to. The book's denouement, which would already have been thin, hurried, and not worthy of the slow build-up because DeMille had run out of book, instead never occurs. That is why not a single issue, question, or mystery raised by the book are resolved, why this was one of the worst "thriller or suspense" novels I've ever read, and why I will not read DeMille again and allow him to waste my time.

This book could partially be redeemed by a sequel. But according to DeMille's website, he's working on yet another government agent/terrorist novel that will have nothing to do with "Night Fall." I won't read that one, or any future DeMille novels, because stories that contain nothing but dialogue and omit action and suspense are meant for the screen and stage and do not translate well into a 500-page novel. Sorry Nelson.

Rating:
Summary: RIP Nelson Demille...Part 2
Review: I totally agree with harleys review....As a fan of Demille's books and have read em all, this one really stinks....I was disappointed with his last book, Up Country, and this one is no better....It's basically Corey walking around, finding clues that the whole FBI could'nt find. He's conviently shipped to Yemen, and the ending is very predictable. This book feels like he just putting out any crap based on his previous works....Plum Island and the Lion's game the best of his writing. I will not by his next book simply because it's a Demille book. Very poor effort, Nelson, try harder next time

Rating:
Summary: Exciting and fast paced
Review: Night Fall is the first Nelson Demille novel that I have read and I found it to be very good.

It is based on the real life event. On 17 July 1996, a Boeing 747, TWA Flight 800, departed New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport bound for Paris. Approximately twelve minutes later, it exploded in mid air just off of Long Island. Reports have indicated that at least 270 people supposedly witnessed objects streaking toward the aircraft. FAA radar operators in New York also witnessed an unknown object `merging' with the aircraft just prior to the crash. After an extensive investigation the government concluded that it was the result of a mechanical failure.

Demille's story features an FBI agent, Kate Mayfield, who is not satisfied with the official outcome. Five years after the crash she attends an annual memorial service for the victims of Flight 800 with her husband, John Corey. He is a former NYPD detective and currently working as a contract agent on the same anti terrorist task force as his wife.

Mayfield mentions some of her concerns to Corey. Then, while they are at the memorial service, another FBI agent Liam Griffith warns Corey off. This threat gets Corey very interested in the case and he starts looking into it.

During the course of the story, intense pressure is put on Corey to cease his extra curricular efforts. In spite of all of it, he doggedly pursues the case.

In the latter part of the book, the action gets very intense. It develops into a story that is hard to put down. I thought that the ending was pretty weak, however, the overall story is exciting and fast paced.

I would recommend it.


Rating:
Summary: What Destroyed Flight 800?
Review: The official report was that TWA Flight 800 was destroyed by an electrical spark in a gas tank. But rumors persist that some people saw a fiery track rise from the ocean and hit the airliner. On July 17, 2001, John Corey and Kate Mayfield, husband and wife, and both members of the FBI's Anti-Terrorist Task Force, attend a memorial sevice for the people that died in the tragedy. They are disturbed by the many reports of a missile, so they launch an off-hours investigation into the reports. This gets strong orders from their bosses to stop, but they continue, and we see them slowly uncover fact after fact, as they move closer to the truth and to mortal danger for themselves. The last quarter of the book becomes very intense, and Demille makes the best choice for a climax, although he passes up a chance to make the ending more exciting. Night Fall is not as exciting as Demille's The Lion's Game, but it is well-worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: "You talkin' to me"
Review: Travis Bickell's line in "Taxi" reminds me (or vice versa) of the character of John Corey. He's a wounded Irish cop with an attitude. He's 40 years old, with an attitude. He's a loving, humorous husband, with an attitude. And here, his Godfather Nelson DeMille gives him an already laid table upon which to have an attitude.

He actually is moved and bored by the 2001 memorial service to the deaths of 230 people aboard TWA Flight 800 into the ocean just south of Cupsogue Beach on Long Island. He's not moved by patriotism (well a little; we know that from the Corey mystique) and if there's a dry eye in the crowd it ain't Corey's. He's there to accompany his wife, FBI Agent Kate Mayfield, who worked the case five years earlier. He really doesn't care. What are the Yanks doing? Will Mrs. Corey favor him with marital bliss before they go home? These are the important issues in his life. Maybe some Scotch as well.

That is until Liam Griffith, mean spirited FBI agent, gets in John's face after the service and says to get the heck out of Dodge, that it's none of his business and if he and his wife continue to 'poke around,' there in deep trouble. And John, from the neck down, face flushed, muscles tightening, says, "You talkin' to me."

I like John Corey. He's a great character. He's relentless, irreverant, courageous, focused and faithful. He's a lot like Spenser and Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, but John has a level of dysfunction that's refreshing, because it reminds us of . . . . us.

He's still angry at his wife for dalliances she "might" have had BEFORE she met him. As my younger friends say, "I'm down with that."

So I think Kate is masterful at bringing John to the service. She just lets it flow, because she figures out what will happen. She's Ms. Procedure, "the company (FBI) line" but she knows that her old man is truly a loose cannon. And she has her own misgivings about the investigation of TWA 800's demise.

So that's about it. I didn't tell you much of the facts but you already know them. I think the sex between the couple on the beach, Bud Mitchell and Jill Winslow, is just a little too graphic but frankly, I thought the development of the two of them, having started to be one dimensional, to eventually be quite deep.

This is too long but let me add one other point for the DeMille-o-philes (like myself). What's the best? Charm School? The Daughter? Word of Honor? Take your pick. This is right up there. Larry Scantlebury. 5 stars.