I was halfway through making dal makhani — the kind that takes three hours because my mother's recipe demands it — when John Corey started making wisecracks about his wife's FBI protocols, and I laughed so hard I nearly burned the onions. Which tells you something about this audiobook. It gets under your skin during the mundane moments. Not because the plot is doing anything particularly surprising (it isn't), but because DeMille has built a character whose psychology is so specific, so stubbornly consistent, that spending fifteen-plus hours with him feels like being trapped at a dinner party with the most entertaining narcissist you've ever met.
And I mean that as both compliment and diagnosis.
John Corey Is a Case Study I Can't Stop Annotating
The protagonist exhibits classic compensatory narcissism — and here's the thing, DeMille knows it. Corey's sarcasm isn't just comic relief; it's a defense mechanism so thick you could use it as body armor. Every joke about his wife's competence, every self-deprecating quip that's actually self-aggrandizing, every time he dismisses protocol because he's "the best detective in the room" — it's all textbook. The research actually shows that individuals who rely on humor as a coping mechanism in high-threat environments often use it to maintain an illusion of control. I noticed similar psychological underpinnings in Double Barreled Detective Story, where Twain plays with detective archetypes in ways that feel surprisingly modern. Corey does this relentlessly.
What makes this character compelling is that DeMille never asks you to agree with him. Corey's arrogance is presented as-is. You either find it charming or insufferable, and honestly? Both reactions are psychologically valid. I found myself asking: why does Corey really need to be the one to kill Khalil? It's not duty. It's not justice. It's ego wrapped in patriotism, and DeMille — whether intentionally or not — has written one of the most honest portrayals of American masculinity in the thriller genre. My therapist would have thoughts about this character. Many, many thoughts.
But here's where it gets frustrating. This is a sequel, and Khalil as an antagonist feels less like a person and more like a plot device with a passport. His chapters read as functional — move here, kill this person, disappear — without the psychological depth that would make the cat-and-mouse dynamic truly electric. DeMille understands Corey's mind inside and out. Khalil? He understands Khalil's itinerary.
Fifteen Hours Is a Long Time to Chase Someone You Already Know
The pacing. Oh, the pacing. Look, I respect a slow burn. I've read Dostoevsky for fun. But there are stretches in this book — particularly in the middle third — where the narrative spins its wheels with procedural details and 9/11 references that feel less like world-building and more like padding. The reluctant skydiving scene? Genuinely funny, Corey at his sardonic best. The tension when Khalil targets Kate? Legitimately gripping — my dal was forgotten entirely during that sequence. But between those peaks, there's a lot of Corey driving places and thinking about how good he is at his job.
Psychologically, the repetition tracks — this is how obsessive minds work, circling the same thoughts — but as a listening experience at nearly sixteen hours, it tests your patience. I bumped the speed to 1.25x around hour eight, and it helped considerably.
Scott Brick: The Narrator Who Matches Corey's Energy (For Better and Worse)
Scott Brick is an interesting case here. His delivery of Corey's one-liners — that dry, slightly too-pleased-with-himself cadence — is genuinely perfect. The ironic inflections land exactly right. When Corey says something outrageous, Brick's voice carries that specific tone of a man who knows he's being outrageous and doesn't care. It's a subtle performance choice and it works.
But. There's a "but." Brick occasionally sounds like he's narrating from inside a very comfortable chair where nothing can touch him — almost bored, almost detached. For a thriller about a terrorist killing people on American soil, that emotional distance is a problem. His female character voices are surprisingly solid, and his accent work is credible without being cartoonish. He doesn't get crazy with vocal differentiation, which honestly suits the first-person narration. You're inside Corey's head. Everyone else is filtered through his perception anyway.
The performance is good. Not electric. Good.
Who Gets the Most Out of This
If you've read The Lion's Game and you're invested in the Corey-Khalil rivalry, this is worth your time — just know that DeMille is more interested in the hunt than the psychology of the hunted. If you need your thriller antagonists to feel three-dimensional, this one will leave you wanting. If you find Corey-style alpha-male humor exhausting rather than entertaining, this is sixteen hours of exactly that, and no amount of good plotting will save you.
Best consumed on a long drive or during cooking — something that keeps your hands busy during the slower stretches.
The Case File, Closed
This is a fascinating case study in how a character can carry a book through sheer force of personality while the actual plot does the bare minimum to keep up. DeMille writes Corey like he's known him for decades (he has), and that intimacy is the book's greatest strength and its most limiting factor. You're getting a portrait of a man, not a thriller that reinvents the genre. Whether that's enough depends entirely on how much you enjoy the company.
