I really wanted to like this book and the actual story and the parts about the terrorist were excellent but the main character, I mean come on! Supposed to be some 'witty' former NY police detective, however nothing he said was funny. I dreaded every part where the main character was the narrator. Also, most of the other characters were written with the same kind of spoken language, that coupled with the narrator's inability to change his voice for the characters make them all blend together. Good story . . . poorly written main character. . . what to do. The story kept me interested but the writing was very poor in my opinion.

If you call this book a thriller, I am sorry but go and read some Dan Brown. I guessed most of the things after the first half of the book. The pace of the book is pretty slow. It talks about the daily life of the characters, their sex life, etc, too long.

The ending is also a little clumsy. The author wraps up the story in the last half an hour. That's it.

Consequently, I did not like it too much. I give only 3/5.

... predictable and corny ... outside of the "lion's" unexpected method of arrival ...

For me, Lion's Game was too much of, "this is what I did first" and "then I did this next" and "she did that." I didn't like the play-by-play description. Got boring for me. I thought it dragged. But if you like that journalistic style, I think you'll like this a lot because the story itself is fine.

Just finished The Lion's Game by Nelson DeMille (audio) and it has me wondering, can a thriller be over-researched? I finished this pre-9/11 story of a dogged NYPD cop on the trail of a Libyan terrorist, and definitely had moments of frustration as DeMille paused to observe the scenery, sit in on a bureaucratic meeting, or watch cops shag.

The protagonist, John Corey, is a likable enough example of the species, but I found his wisecracking dialogue creaky (downright colorless when compared to, say Elmore Leonard, but then...). The plot was plausible (see research above), and I appreciated the narrative techniques of switching back and for the between cop and terrorist -- PC points scored on that one.

It's not that this is a bad book (I listened to all 25 hours of it, after all), it's that it took our heroes a good 16 hours (of listening time) to even pick up the bad guy's trail. I felt the Corey romance with his partner Kate, was cookie-cutter and given an awful lot of air time. Lion's Game had it's hair raising moments, but it took a lot of meetings to get there.

In other words, cut to the chase.

The plot is interesting but the book is too long. Did not find myself in much of suspense for almost entire book. Slept through decent chunks of the narrative without missing much substance.

Briefly, this book really holds your attention and imagination. I got it for a long plane ride and couldn't stop listening to it. My compliments to the narrator. One of the best I've heard!

This was my first Demille read and it was great! It was over 20 hours, but I ended up listening to it on my computer just because I only had 4 hours to go and wanted to continue.

There is much detail in this novel. I liked the way that each chapter changes protagonist from good guy to bad guy until the end when they merge together. It was long, so maybe some of the details were irrelevant, however, I can see how it also added to the storyline. I got to really know the characters.

I would recommend this novel. The narrator was also great, which can make/break the audio book. I tend to avoid the audio books where reviewers have said the narration is bad, better to get a paperback on those.

LOVE this author and narrator...give me more. I have to say my favorite combination. Anything by these two I will buy. Did not want this book to end. Hope that John Corey comes back again.

This was a very well written book. It was also very well narrated and kept my attention the entire time.