This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Nelson DeMille

Excerpt from Radiant Angel copyright © 2015 by Nelson DeMille

Author Foreword copyright © 2017 by Nelson DeMille

“Oklahoma” (by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II) Copyright © 1943 by WILLIAMSON MUSIC. Copyright Renewed. International Copyright Secured.

Reprinted by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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ISBN 978-0-759-52833-8

E3-20231209-JV-PC-COR

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

Acknowledgments

Epigraph

Map

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Discover More

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Navigation

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Table of Contents

To Larry Kirshbaum,
friend, editor,
and gambling partner.

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Author’s Note

Concerning the United States Department of Agriculture Animal Disease Center at Plum Island, I took a small amount of literary license regarding the island and the work done there.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to the following individuals for sharing their special knowledge with me. Any errors or omissions in the story are mine and mine alone. Also, I have taken a small measure of literary license here and there, but for the most part, I have tried to stay true to the information and advice provided to me by these men and women:

First and foremost, thanks to Detective Lieutenant John Kennedy of the Nassau County Police Department, the man who did almost as much work as I did on this novel. John Kennedy is a dedicated police officer, an honest lawyer, an expert sailor, a good husband to Carol, a good friend to me, and a tough literary critic. Many, many thanks for your time and expertise.

I would like to thank again Dan Starer of Research for Writers, NYC, for his diligent work.

I would also like to thank Bob and Linda Scalia of Southold for their help with local lore and customs.

My thanks to Martin Bowe and Laura Flanagan of the Garden City Public Library for their excellent research assistance.

Many thanks to Howard Polskin of CNN, and Janet Alshouse, Cindi Younker, and Mike DelGiudice of News 12 Long Island, for making available their video reporting on Plum Island.

Thanks again to Bob Whiting of Banfi Vintners for sharing with me his knowledge of and passion for wine.

My thanks to Dr. Alfonso Torres, Director of the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, for his time and patience, and my admiration for him and his staff for the important and selfless work they do.

Thanks and gratitude to my assistant, Dianne Francis, for hundreds of hours of arduous and dedicated work.

My sincere thanks to my agent and friend, Nick Ellison, and his staff, Christina Harcar and Faye Bender. An author couldn’t have better representation or better colleagues.

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

—Benjamin Franklin,
Poor Richard’s Almanac (1735)

INTRODUCTION

Plum Island

Hard to believe it’s been twenty years since Plum Island was first published. Time flies when you’re having a good time, and I’ve had a very good time with my politically incorrect, wiseass character of John Corey. To mark this occasion, I thought you’d like to know some behind-the-scenes history of this book and how the John Corey series began.

I wrote Plum Island as a stand-alone book and it was not meant to introduce a continuing character, but as I was writing my next book (which was Up Country) Plum Island was published and became a huge bestseller, spending 16–20 weeks on most bestseller lists.

My editor realized that we had an extraordinary success with Plum Island, and fan mail and book reviews confirmed this. So why not do another John Corey book? Well, for one thing, all my books were stand-alones, and I didn’t want to do a continuing series. Also, in Plum Island, Corey is an NYPD Homicide detective on convalescent leave after receiving three gunshot wounds in the line of duty, and at the end of the book Corey is retired from the police force with a medical disability. End of book, end of Corey.

On the other hand, I don’t write for myself; I write for my readers. And my readers wanted another John Corey book, as their fan letters made clear. So I put aside Up Country and revisited John Corey.

My main problem with using Corey in a continuing series was that NYPD officers who have been retired with a medical disability can never return to active duty. Therefore, to keep my story accurate I needed to find another job for John—and he definitely didn’t want to be a security guard at Home Depot.

So to help Corey find gainful employment I called several men and women I knew in law enforcement for advice, and many of them suggested that any small-town police force would be happy to hire a former NYPD detective with Corey’s credentials, and I almost went this route.

Others suggested that Corey could become a private investigator, what we used to call a “private eye.” This too sounded like a solution but not quite what I was looking for.

Then I called a friend who had recently retired from the NYPD and he told me that he’d started a second career as a contract agent with the Federal Joint Terrorism Task Force—the JTTF. Would Detective Corey qualify for this job? Absolutely.

The John Corey book I then wrote, titled The Lion’s Game, was also a 16-week bestseller, which validated the decision to bring back Detective Corey, now a contract agent with the JTTF—which I renamed the Anti-Terrorist Task Force.

Corey’s subsequent adventures were all in the same genre of anti-terrorism, and they were all commercial and critical successes. But those successes, I believe, were not necessarily because of the genre; they were because of the main character of John Corey who inadvertently began the series with a different job.

Regarding plots and themes, many thriller writers have turned to anti-terrorism subjects, which, unfortunately, are a sign of our times. The plot of Plum Island, however, is timeless, and can be read twenty years from now and still seem fresh and contemporary. I’m not giving away the plot here, but I will say that Plum Island was actually the product of my joining together of two unrelated themes that had always interested me—buried treasure and biological warfare. How these two themes intertwine to form a coherent and exciting story will become clear as you read the book. What will also become clear is that this is a very intense tale of greed, jealousy, betrayal, sex, and murder. Which doesn’t sound funny, but trust me, John Corey will make you LOL while you’re at the edge of your seat.

And who is John Corey? Well, as I said, he’s decidedly politically incorrect, which still resonates after all these years. He’s also a lovable rogue who is a man’s man but also a ladies’ man. I’ve gotten thousands of letters over the years from women who want to meet John Corey, and if Plum Island is made into a TV series by Sony, who has optioned the Corey character, we can all meet him on the small screen.

Another reason that women like the Corey series is that I’ve always introduced strong and smart female characters who challenge Corey’s craziness. In Plum Island I have two such characters: Beth Penrose, a Suffolk County, New York, homicide detective; and Emma Whitestone, a very sexy and smart lady who lives on the North Fork of Long Island where the story takes place. Poor John has more women than he can handle in Plum Island, but he manages to rise to the occasion as he does in subsequent books.

It’s been twenty years since Plum Island first hit the shelves and it’s remained in print for these two decades and continues to be read by fans of the John Corey series and fans of my other books—and also by a new generation of readers who write me enthusiastic letters, some of which refer to Plum Island as my “new book”—proving that what’s old is new, and that a good story remains a good story through the ages.

So put on your hazmat suit, get a shovel to dig for buried treasure, and enjoy!

Nelson DeMille

Long Island, New York

March 2017