Here is an intriguing and sophisticated murder mystery of an upstanding military officer - the base commander's daughter - who's been leading an unsavory double life.

When a professional military woman with a pristine reputation is found raped and murdered, a preliminary search turns up certain paraphernalia, and sex toys that point to a scandal of major proportions, The chief investigator is reluctant to take the case when he learns that his partner will be a woman with whom he had a tempestuous affair and an unpleasant parting. But duty calls and intrigue begins when they learn that several top-level people may have been involved with the "golden girl" - and many have wanted her dead.

It's Nelson DeMille at his best - exciting, suspenseful and highly provocative.

CHAPTER ONE

Is this seat taken?" I asked the attractive young woman sitting by herself in the lounge.

She looked up from her newspaper but didn't reply.

I sat opposite her at the cocktail table and put down my beer. She went back to her paper and sipped on her drink, a bourbon and Coke. I inquired, "Come here often?"

"Go away."

"What's your sign?"

"No trespassing."

"Don't I know you from somewhere?"

"No."

"Yes. NATO Headquarters in Brussels. We met at a cocktail party."

"Perhaps you're right," she conceded. "You got drunk and threw up in the punch bowl."

"Small world," I said. And indeed it was. Cynthia Sunhill, the woman sitting across from me now, was more than a casual acquaintance. In fact, we were once involved, as they say. Apparently she chose not to remember much of it. I said, "You threw up. I told you bourbon and Coke wasn't good for your stomach."

"You are not good for my stomach."

You'd think by her attitude that I had walked out on her rather than vice versa.

We were sitting in the cocktail lounge of the Officers' Club at Fort Hadley, Georgia. It was the Happy Hour, and everyone there seemed happy, save for us two. I was dressed in a blue civilian suit, she in a nice pink knit dress that brought out her tan, her auburn hair, her hazel eyes, and other fondly remembered anatomy. I inquired, "Are you here on assignment?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that."

"Where are you staying?"

No reply.

"How long will you be here?"

She went back to her newspaper.

I asked, "Did you marry that guy you were seeing on the side?"

She put down the paper and looked at me. "I was seeing you on the side. I was engaged to him."

"That's right. Are you still engaged?"

"None of your business."

"It could be."

"Not in this lifetime," she informed me, and hid behind her paper again.

I didn't see an engagement ring or a wedding ring, but in our business that didn't mean much, as I'd learned in Brussels.

Cynthia Sunhill, by the way, was in her late twenties, and I'm in my early forties, so ours was not a May-November romance, but more May-September. Maybe August.

It lasted a year while we were both stationed in Europe, and her fiancé, a Special Forces major, was stationed in Panama. Military life is tough on relationships of all kinds, and the defense of Western civilization makes people horny.

Cynthia and I had separated a little over a year before this chance encounter, under circumstances that can best be described as messy. Apparently neither she nor I had gotten over it; I was still hurting and she was still pissed off. The betrayed fiancé looked a little annoyed, too, the last time I saw him in Brussels with a pistol in his hand.

The O Club at Hadley is vaguely Spanish in architecture, perhaps Moorish, which may have been why Casablanca popped into my mind, and I quipped out of the side of my mouth, "Of all the gin joints in the world, she walks into mine."

Either she didn't get it or she wasn't in a smiling mood, because she continued to read her newspaper, the Stars and Stripes, which nobody reads, at least not in public.

 

Nelson DeMille was born in New York City and moved as a child with his

family to Long Island. In high school, he played football and ran track.

DeMille spent three years at Hofstra University, then joined the Army

and attended Officer Candidate School. He was commissioned a Second

Lieutenant and served in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader with the

First Cavalry Division.

DeMille returned to the States and went back to Hofstra University where

he received his degree in Political Science and History. He married and

had two children, divorced, and remarried.

DeMille's earlier books were NYPD detective novels. His first major

novel was By the Rivers of Babylon, published in 1978 and still

in print, as are all his succeeding novels. He is a member of The

Authors Guild, the Mystery Writers of America, and American Mensa. He

holds three honorary doctorates: Doctor of Humane Letters from Hofstra

University, Doctor of Literature from Long Island University, and Doctor

of Humane Letters from Dowling College.

 

 

The General's Daughter by Nelson DeMille
Continue Browsing		View Wish List