Plum Island

Plum Island by Nelson DeMille

Read October 2023 - Zoom Reading Circle

#1 in the John Corey series

Well... this was quite the book!  ha!  I listened to it on audiobook and I think that might have been better overall than reading it in print form.  The main character is a real letch and a guy that I would despise in real life.  However, as a woman, particularly a woman ‘of a certain age’, I certainly have met guys like John Corey.  He undresses every woman he meets in his mind, has a lot more confidence about his ability to ‘bed them’ than perhaps he should (although this is written by a man so the confidence probably is accurate since the author can make anything happen in those pages.)  He is foul mouthed, sarcastic, unhelpful, and just generally full of himself.  At the beginning of the book you know where this will go in some general terms... he will end up in the ocean, probably in a storm, and the injuries that he is still in recovery from will be a problem.  (note - that was close to the fact of what happened, although not exact)  

From the start of the book I pictured John Corey played by Bruce Willis.  A mixture of his David character from Moonlighting and his character in Die Hard.  I could tell the era this book was written in, down to the frequent descriptions of shoes with no socks, jackets over t-shirts, and etc.  The story itself was intriguing enough, although again, it wasn’t too hard to get the general idea of how it was going to go... it was then just a matter of getting through the specifics of the plot.  While the book annoyed me in many ways, I will admit that I found myself, once or twice, thinking ‘I sure would like to go listen to my audiobook now...’  Go figure.  :)  

The premise...

John Corey is an NYPD detective who is convalescing at his uncles Long Island home after nearly being killed by two assailants who shot him three times and got away.  He is wary and watchful but gets drawn into the investigation of the murders of a couple who had befriended him during his summer on the island.  Even though there are local police, FBI, and CIA there, John Corey is the only one who spots certain clues and begins to get a clearer picture of what is really going on.  (sigh)  He is also sexist, uncooperative, disruptive and rude to the lead detective, who happens to be a female (that he undresses with his eyes upon first meeting).  But of course, everyone values his insights and wants him to work the case with them as a consultant.  There are twists and turns as we find out more about what Tom and Judy Gordon (the murdered couple) were up to.  The end of the book had some gore that caught me off guard... I don’t care for that stuff.  Again, I pictured this as a movie with Bruce Willis and somehow that made it easer to stomach.  But I would not have chosen this on my own to read.  It was a Zoom Reading Circle selection.  Doubt I would read any more in this series, although, giving credit to the author, the characters have stayed with me a bit.  It was also a super long book - like 600 pages/ 19 hours audio version long.  At the end I had it sped up to about 1.8.  

There were a couple of lines that I would have highlighted had I been reading it, but since I was listening to it in my car when I heard those lines, I can’t even remember what they were - no real way to take notes.  Oh well.  I am confident they weren’t THAT good.  ;)  

Ah!  Found one that I had taken note of on Amazon... 

I’ll tell you, the older you get, the more baggage you have to carry, and the less you’re able to lift it.

I rated this book a 3.  Reading Circle pretty much felt the same way as me and rated it a 2.6.  That is probably more like it.  :)