The Deserter by Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille

Published in the UK in 2019; published by Simon & Schuster on October 22, 2019

I love the John Corey series and I’ve enjoyed most of Nelson DeMille’s other work. I can’t tell how much of The Deserter, co-authored with his son Alex, is Nelson’s and how much is Alex’s. That’s a good thing because the collaboration has not produced an obvious drop-off in quality. On the other hand, the protagonist is sort of a Corey clone and the atmosphere is similar to Nelson’s last novel, The Cuban Affair, complete with relentless bashing of what our president would call a shithole country. At the same time, the novel’s political takes (as expressed by its characters) are a bit less astute than those in The Cuban Affair. Still, I easily ignored the politics and raced through the novel because DeMille & Son know their craft. The story produces thrills and that’s what a successful thriller should do.

Broadly following the premise of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and its movie counterpart, Apocalypse Now, The Deserter imagines that a Delta Force captain abandoned his command in Afghanistan, was captured by the Taliban, escaped, beheaded his captors, and made his way to Venezuela, where he took command of local mercenaries so he could help them resist America’s undeclared military interests. The captain is more similar to Coppola’s Kurtz than to Conrad’s, in that he has been driven mad not just by the jungle he inhabits but by the military service that shaped his sense of destiny.  

Scott Brodie is a chief warrant officer. He and his partner, Maggie Taylor, have been tasked with finding the Delta Force officer, Kyle Mercer. Someone who knows Mercer spotted him in Venezuela. Brodie’s orders are to bring him back without worrying about legal niceties like extradition. Given that Mercer is formidable, the assignment seems like it might be more than a couple of warrant officers can handle, but Brodie is up for it because, well, this is a thriller.

The Venezuela setting gives the characters a chance to blame Venezuela’s woes on socialism, a simplistic analysis of a complex country that readers with more nuanced views can safely ignore. The atmosphere, both in Caracas and in the jungle, is dangerous. Why Caracas is dangerous is irrelevant to the plot, despite all the pontificating about socialism. Fortunately, the father-and-son writing team eventually stop dwelling on the why and start focusing on the action, which is all that matters in an action-driven thriller. Chases and fights, in a brothel where Mercer was hanging out and in a jungle camp where Mercer is training mercenaries, are credible and exciting.

The plot benefits from a layer of intrigue as Brodie and Taylor struggle to understand why a Delta Force hero would desert his post. The explanation is based on a conspiracy that, given the American government’s conspiratorial history, isn’t hard to swallow.

Brodie is snarky, although he’s Corey-lite when it comes to snark. He isn’t big on planning. He has a tendency to ignore orders and charge ahead to complete the mission as he defines it, a fairly common attribute of military thriller heroes. He’s selectively moralistic (another common feature of military thriller heroes), coming down on Taylor for an arguable betrayal of her position while Brodie deserves to be dishonorably discharged for repeatedly disobeying orders.

Taylor is tough but doesn’t have much personality, beyond playing the humanizing role to which tough women in thrillers are often relegated (they keep the testosterone driven males from killing everyone in sight). The sexual tension between Brodie and Taylor is predictable but it doesn’t interfere with the story. Readers don’t expect deep characterization in a book like this so its absence shouldn’t be disappointing. Instead, readers of The Deserter will get what they are paying for when they buy a thriller. Predictable or not, flawed or not, the thriller delivers its thrills.

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