WILD FIRE, by Nelson DeMille

Have you ever had to sit through a meeting that you thought would never end? A meeting where staying awake seemed to be a Herculean task? In Wild Fire the bad guys have a meeting near the beginning of the novel. You, the reader, have to sit there and listen to them discuss their plans that go on until page 127. First they can't decide the day of the week for their big event. That takes some pages. Then they can't decide what cities to stage it in. More long discussions ensue. When we finally stagger out of that marathon session we join John Corey and his long suffering wife. She's his FBI boss, and he works for the anti terrorism task force. His response to everything she says (and to what anyone else in the novel says) is a smartass wisecrack. How does she put up with it? Well the two of them talk a lot, and drive around a lot tracking down the Bad People. Well they can't do that 24/7 so they get drunk at night in their hotel. The plot moves along (slowly) until our chatty couple finally meets up with the Chief Bad Person. This happens about 50 pages before the ending of the book, and if you want to save time you can just stop reading the book and go to sleep. Those last 50 pages contain writing that is pure clichéd formula. You know just how everything is going to turn out. It is really totally by the numbers stuff. There are no plot twists and turns, no surprises, just hack writing. Oh yes, when Mr. DeMille runs out of clever dialog he just has his characters say "F*&^% You" to each other. There's a lot of that actually. What can I say? Nelson DeMille is (was?) one of my favorite writers, but this novel has to be one of his poorest works.