Nelson DeMille hardly needs my endorsement. The bestselling author, who died of esophageal cancer in 2024, wrote 24 novels — and sold 58 million books — under his own name or the pseudonyms Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Ellen Kay, and Brad Matthews. He lived in Garden City on Long Island and set many of his stories in the area. Only one, The General’s Daughter, starring John Travolta and Madeleine Stowe, was made into a major film, although two others became TV movies.

I read The Cuban Affair, which features Army combat vet Daniel “Mac” MacCormick, in 2017, and lately have been reading the eight-book John Corey series — whose inaugural installment is Plum Island — in which DeMille gives free rein to his humor. Corey is a New York City detective who was shot in Manhattan and subsequently joins the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, which operates under the aegis of the FBI. The opening volume kicks off with Corey assessing the scene in front of him:

“Through my binoculars, I could see this nice forty-something-foot cabin cruiser anchored a few hundred yards offshore. There were two thirtyish couples aboard, having a merry old time, sunbathing, banging down brews and whatever. The women had on teensey-weensey little bottoms and no tops, and one of the guys was standing on the bow, and he slipped off his trunks and stood there a minute hanging hog, then jumped in the bay and swam around the boat. What a great country. I put down my binoculars and popped a Budweiser.”

The hallmark of DeMille novels is vigorous prose, which he uses to make Long Island (in the Corey series) and Cuba/Miami — another favorite setting — come alive. One obituary called his books “compulsively readable,” and that’s certainly true of the ones I’ve read. The humor borders on the juvenile, but it’s an important part of who Corey is. (Many characters also have a strong sex drive, which adds to the entertainment. The author himself was twice divorced and widowed once.)

DeMille’s son Alex collaborated with him on three novels, including The Tin Men, posthumously published in 2025 (and not to be confused with the 1987 movie “Tin Men,” starring Richard Dreyfuss and Danny DeVito). It features robots and artificial intelligence — they’re winning — which shows that DeMille, even late in his career, kept his finger on the pulse of current events. For his part, and surely to the delight of DeMille-franchise fans, Alex seems ready to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Darrell Delamaide is a journalist and author based in Washington, DC. He has written two novels and two works of nonfiction.