The hair-raising suspense of The General's Daughter... the wry wit of The Gold Coast...this is vintage Nelson DeMille at the peak of his originality and the height of his powers.

Wounded in the line of duty, NYPD homicide cop John Corey is convalescing in rural eastern Long Island when an attractive young couple he knows is found shot to death on the family patio. The victims were biologists at Plum Island, a research site rumored to be an incubator for germ warfare.Suddenly, a local double murder takes on shattering global implications -- and thrusts Corey and two extraordinary women into a dangerous search for the secret of PLUM ISLAND....

May 1997

Garden City, Long Island resident and author Nelson DeMille has a few favorite beaches he likes to wander on New York's Long Island shores. "I love the ocean beach at Southampton," he says, "but the best beaches are really the small island beaches. Unfortunately, many of them are off-limits, such as Plum Island, or inaccessible except by boat." When physical access is restricted, the curiosity of the onlooker waxes all the more. Hence, the tiny atoll that is Plum Island, one and one-half miles off of Suffolk County's North Fork, became the perfect setting in DeMille's imagination for his mystery, Plum Island. Long a fixture of local folklore, Plum Island's salty environs is undisturbed, save for the abandoned gun turrets of what was once Fort Terry -- and the laboratory of the Animal Disease Center, a research facility with a controversial history of secret government experiments in biological warfare. Into this actual North Fork setting, DeMille's fictional characters disembark, toting plot twists, suspense, and wry humor that combine into the murder mystery that unfolds on the pages of Plum Island.

The residents of Long Island's North Fork are financially comfortable and keep to themselves, preferring the more secluded life to the glamorous partying that defines the Hamptons to the southeast. Plum Island opens with the grisly discovery of the two bodies of Tom and Judy Gordon, a husband-and-wife team of biologists who worked for the Department of Agriculture in animal disease research. At first glance, the couple appears to have been murdered during a botched robbery attempt, each with a single bullet in the temple. The quiet community is ruffled. The Gordons had gotten used to the lavish rewards of the good life, owning a sleek speedboat and an acre of choice property overlooking the Great Peconic Bay. But is there something more to the crime? Were the Gordons merely innocent victims of senseless and greed-driven violence, or were they involved in something deeper?

NYPD detective John Corey is called upon by an old friend at the Southold Town Police Department to help investigate the homicides. Recuperating from an injury, Corey is on leave and bored -- a double murder mystery seems to be just the remedy for restlessness. He is teamed up with Beth Penrose, a local gumshoe working her first homicide. Corey has heard the troubling speculation that the government has been conducting research into biological warfare on Plum Island. Did the Gordons die because they overstepped their bounds? Perhaps they had tried to make off with a lethal, genetically engineered virus, or a precious vaccine? By the time Corey and Penrose visit the Gordon's lab on the Island, the FBI and the CIA have done a sweeping sanitization, and the truth is muddied in vague press statements. Detective Corey is determined to sniff out the murderer's trail, because one question remains as the killings continue: Has the lethal virus fallen into deviant hands?

Filled with colorful, unique characters and humor stirred into suspense, Nelson DeMille's Plum Island imparts to readers the ambiance of Long Island, "an outsider's observations on North Fork life and mores."

Advertising

Read More