WILD FIRE

Number 14 (Up Country, 2002, etc.) from the master of the parboiled potboiler, in which an intrepid cop single-handedly staves off Armageddon.

Granted, he gets a bit of help from the little woman. John Corey, ex-NYPD detective, currently employed as part of a crack ad-hoc group called the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, is married to his boss, gorgeous Kate Mayfield, an FBI agent. Boss she may be, but Kate recognizes star quality when she sees it, and defers to it becomingly, as in Corey’s world good little women are wont to do. Her faith in him is about to be tested, however. A colleague is murdered—one of those homicides made to look like an accident that seldom for a minute fools the savvy protagonists in the DeMille stable. Having smelled a rat, Corey goes after him like a starved cat, irritating an array of his by-the-book bosses. But this indeed is a rat to be reckoned with—a megalomaniac with a secret agenda aimed at saving the planet by permanently rearranging its population. And he has allies, people whose comfort in the corridors of power might be counted on to cause a certain discomfort among their adversaries. Not in Corey, however. His creed says it all: “At the end, you carry the gun and the shield out into the field, for the sole purpose of confronting the bad guys.” So, never mind the power, the fat wallets, the four suitcase-sized nuclear bombs and the scary conspiracy—Corey’s plugged in and ready to confront. Americans can now rest easy. Until the next time.

Too long, too repetitive, too many one-liners that don’t quite work, but Corey’s hard-nosed way with a bad guy (homegrown as well as foreign) may resonate even with the skeptical.