My 4 star review of Wild Fire, by Nelson Demille :-
Spoiler:
I temporarily toyed with the notion of not registering this reread. That is because I knew that it was more difficult writing an interesting review of books like this - books that required not a lot of talent, but a certain range of talent. I had fallen into the habit of reviewing nonfiction books this year. This is the first fiction book of the year for me. Also, I did not like my previous review. I had been, in the year 2014, regressing in terms of analytical thoughts and also misguided in the beliefs of what actually made a review good. So it came as a cold feeling to me when I realised that I wouldn't be able - as I said before - to write well here.
This book got the same rating twice from me. But this time I was able to picture everything much clearer. Bain Madox - the one and loony - made for a great villain. He wants to initiate project Wild Fire. And John Corey, the able cop that is neither the good one or bad one (he is just the funny one) is there to try and stop Madox. All of this seems quite clumsy. And to tell the truth, the writing in the book, trying in the initial pages to come across as understated, is overall, quite laborious. But the book works. The repetitiveness side of it is not its major fault. The book's major fault is that it does not sell the idea for its plot 100 %. But this is a thriller. And as thrillers go, they don't come much larger than life than this.
I decided to write a review of this reread without reading the last chapter of Wild Fire. The good guys win. But the slimiest of the baddies get their comeuppance to them in that last Chapter. This is no spoiler, see, because all thrillers are like this. The genre has as much stilted tradition as a medieval play. The jokes in the book dry up when they must and I think this shows some awareness on the part of Demille, who, frankly, has written far worse books in his yawning stretch of a career. Wild Fire is well written, but it wouldn't translate well if a cinematic adaptation was produced.
The book is also not very charming, nor has it become better over the years. But it is sometimes absorbing in its narration. And that is because the details of the plot are unique to the genre. The intelligent man's thriller is something that Wild Fire attempts to be. It succeeds partly in that too. Like a shark, the book keeps moving. Over the years, I have read a wide gamut of books. The more I think of this one, the more puzzled I become. This is because I don't know what is the hook in it. It is supposed to be the solving of the mystery and the foiling of the evil men's plans. But now reflecting on it, I simply cannot put my finger on what makes this book tick.
Finally, I must state that there were just the right number of characters in this thriller. Detective John Corey and his wife Kate Mayfield are colleagues who happen to be a couple, just like the ones in offices round the world. Kate is a strong woman who feels feminine. But for the life of me I cannot decide if the femininity is the result of bad writing or good. I'll leave it at that. I enjoyed rereading this escapist book with wiser eyes, and the read was not a total waste of time.