The Lion's Game

“AN INCREDIBLY FAST-PACED THRILLER… A testament to not only DeMille’s great storytelling skills but also to his superb attention
to detail.”

—Philadelphia Inquirer

“THOROUGHLY ENJOYABLE… a first-person protagonist whose laugh-out-loud witticisms blend handily with the violence at hand…
Corey as a character is simply irresistible.”

—Dallas Morning News

“ON TOP OF HIS GAME… Nelson DeMille, as always, entertains in
THE LION’S GAME
… A compelling contest of a cop vs. master terrorist… His opening gambit is a gotcha.”

—New York Daily News

“PAIRS TERRIFIC SUSPENSE WITH NONSTOP WISECRACKING…
DeMille sweeps you along with his masterful crosscutting between the good guys and the bad, slaying both the extremist Middle
Eastern mind-set and our own lowbrow American culture.”

—Entertainment Weekly

“HIS BEST THRILLER YET… THE ACTION UNFOLDS AT AN ADRENALINE-DRAINING PACE… [the] true master of testosterone thrillers.”

—New York Post

“COREY’S BACK. THIS TIME, HE’S EVEN BETTER THAN EVER…
DeMille maintains the suspense.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“BREEZILY NARRATED, HIGH-OCTANE… A COMPULSIVELY READABLE THRILLER.”

—Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“A THRILLER FROM A STORYTELLER AT THE TOP OF HIS GAME.”

—Sunday Oklahoman

“ONE OF HIS MOST SATISFYING BOOKS SO FAR… DeMille has proved book after book that the term page-turner is more than just a
pithy jacket quote.”

—Metrowest Daily News
(MA)

“SUSPENSE BUILDS STEADILY… fascinating us with an inside look at those who kill and those who bring killers to justice… Throughout,
we’re aware of being guided by a skilled and sensitive writer.”

—New York Times Book Review

“A TENSE TALE as well as a surprisingly complex portrayal of what might have been just another nasty villain.”

—People
(starred review)

“GO OUT AND GET A COPY OF
THE LION’S GAME
… With
THE LION’S GAME
, DeMille adds another notch to his literate gunslinger
reputation… There are enough plot twists to keep you reading, and the chapters told from Khalil’s point of view are captivating.
Bottom line: You won’t be able to put down this fast-paced thriller.”

—Denver Post

THE CRITICS PRAISE
AUTHOR NELSON D
E
MILLE

“A MASTER OF THE UNEXPECTED… an accomplished and incredibly versatile storyteller.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A MARVELOUS CONTEMPORARY WRITER WITH SOMETHING TO SAY, something as rare as it is rewarding.”

—New York Daily News

“HIS NOVELS ARE TIMELY, AUTHENTIC, AND FILLED WITH CONVINCING CHARACTERS… One of the few writers who consistently takes chances
and consistently succeeds.”

—Baltimore Sun

“A MASTER AT KEEPING THE READER HANGING ON TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.”

—Associated Press

“AN INTELLIGENT AND ACCOMPLISHED STORYTELLER.”

—Miami Herald

“D
E
MILLE’S TURF: SUSPENSE, TECHNOCRATIC THRILLS, WRY HUMOR.”

—Hartford Courant

“A FIRST-RATE WRITER.”

—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“DeMille is a gifted writer whose thrillers never stray off course.”

—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Novels by Nelson DeMille

B
Y THE
R
IVERS OF
B
ABYLON

C
ATHEDRAL

T
HE
T
ALBOT
O
DYSSEY

W
ORD OF
H
ONOR

T
HE
C
HARM
S
CHOOL

T
HE
G
OLD
C
OAST

T
HE
G
ENERAL’S
D
AUGHTER

S
PENCERVILLE

P
LUM
I
SLAND

T
HE
L
ION’S
G
AME

U
P
C
OUNTRY

N
IGHT
F
ALL

W
ILD
F
IRE

T
HE
G
ATE
H
OUSE

T
HE
L
ION

With Thomas Block

M
AYDAY

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2000 by Nelson DeMille

Introduction Copyright © 2010 by Nelson DeMille

Excerpt from
The Lion
Copyright © 2010 by Nelson DeMille

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without prior written
permission of the publisher.

Grand Central Publishing

Hachette Book Group

237 Park Avenue

New York, NY 10017

Visit our website at
www.HachetteBookGroup.com

www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

First Trade Edition: January 2002

Reissued: May 2010

Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book
Group, Inc.

ISBN: 978-0-446-93138-0

In loving memory of Mom—

A member of the Greatest Generation

It’s often easier to write an introduction to a book that’s been around a while; the introduction becomes, in a sense, more of a thoughtful retrospective on the book, written
with the advantages of hindsight and history.

The Lion’s Game
was written in 1999 and published in January 2000. I make this point because of the events of September 11, 2001. Many readers
of this book believe that there are references in
The Lion’s Game
that predict that horrific day, and many people have called
The Lion’s Game
prescient and even prophetic. And while this is flattering to any writer, I don’t claim to be a bestselling Nostra-damus.
Bestselling, yes, Nostradamus, no.

How then did I apparently predict some of the events of September 11, 2001, without a crystal ball? The answer is simple:
The handwriting was on the wall for all to see. The facts of the first attack on the North Tower of the World Trade Center,
which occurred on February 26, 1993, were obviously well known when I wrote
The Lion’s Game
, and are even mentioned in the book. That attack by Islamic extremists, using a truck bomb parked in the underground parking
garage of the North Tower, should have been a wake-up call to America. But we, the American public and the media, did not
see this attack as a warning of what was to come.

The men and women who work in the field of anti-terrorism, however,
did
understand the implications of what happened. When I began researching
The Lion’s Game
, I was fortunate to have an entrée into the workings of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York City, which is made up
mostly of FBI agents and NYPD detectives, as well as retired detectives, such as my character of John Corey. You’ll meet some
of these men and women in this work of fiction, though names, titles, and procedures have been changed for obvious reasons
of confidentiality and national security.

But back to 9/11. While conducting interviews with JTTF personnel for
The Lion’s Game
, I kept hearing about “the next attack,” and here is what I heard almost two years
before
the actual events of September 11, 2001: The World Trade Center would again be targeted, and the attack would be carried
out by suicide pilots, flying small private jets loaded with fuel and explosives, which would be flown into the North and
South Towers of the Trade Center.

This was eerily close to what actually happened, so when the events of the morning of September 11, 2001, unfolded, I was
not taken completely unaware. And neither were the people who had spent years investigating terrorist threats to this country.

By the evening of 9/11, I’d gotten dozens of phone calls and e-mails, many from the media, asking me how I “knew” this was
going to happen. Well, I didn’t know, but things that I learned while researching
The Lion’s Game
had obviously worked their way into my mind and into this story.

* * *

If
The Lion’s Game
is at all prescient, it is so because of the job I gave to my main character, John Corey.

We first met John Corey in
Plum Island
, where the book opens on the North Fork of Long Island and Corey is recuperating from bullet wounds, which will ultimately
force him into early retirement from his job as an NYPD homicide detective.

Plum Island
was meant to be a stand-alone book—not the beginning of a series—but reader reaction to John Corey was so positive that I
decided to bring him back, which I did here in
The Lion’s Game
. The problem I’d created, however, was that at the end of
Plum Island
, Corey is no longer with the NYPD.