First, let me say that, like the other 5 DeMille novels I've read, I couldn't put this book down, despite what I consider to be the biggest cop-out ending ever written. From beginning to about 20 pages from the end, there is great character development, stellar storyline, and plenty of suspense. It sucks you in, and then, just when you think of 3 possible ways that the storyline could resolve itself...DeMille quits writing cold turkey.

Without giving away anything, the ending is hollow and empty. I am left feeling abandoned, like I just wasted a week of my life.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. I'm now rethinking my decision to read The Gate House...at all.

DO NOT READ THIS BOOK!!! ZERO STARS!!!

This book HAD everything going for it up until the last 6 pages. That's all it took for the author to pull out the biggest Deus Ex Machina in recent American history. On top of this pathetic literary device, the author threw in exploitations of not one, but TWO tragedies.

I was wrapped up in a lie for the first 479 pages. I could hear the 800-pound gorilla settling into the chair beside me as soon as the epilogue ended and the main story began. I knew 100 pages out that everything was closing in on the plot. I had hopes that the 800-pound wouldn't ruin the ending. So why am I complaining? Because I wasted a week of late night reading on this book. The 800-pound gorilla stood up and choked the life out of the plot.

What a despicable use of actual lives to sell this fictional garbage.

I have read all of DeMille books but the ones I love the most are those books with his characters Kate and John Corey. I hope to heavens he writes more, with Kate and John Corey as his central characters. How can you not love a man who is a little on the wild side, and with a wife (who is his boss) with the FBI.

Just to lay the facts out, I usually like Nelson Demille's works. This book had a lot of promise. I found myself flipping through the pages following the story, waiting for some sense of closure.

Instead the ending was "the past 650 pages were just a preamble to the next book which may actually have something to do with the plot established in the first chapter and then ignored for the rest of the book".

Very disappointing. I expect, when reading a Demille novel, to have purpose and closure at the end, even if they end up somewhat vague. This novel really disappoints.

(3.5 stars) Imagining an alternative scenario to the one which the government formulated to explain the crash of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, shortly after it left JFK Airport, Nelson Demille imagines and explores a different explanation. Of the more than seven hundred eye witnesses to the explosion, over two hundred swore they saw a missile fire and then hit the aircraft, and Demille explores this possibility in detail. In the process he examines the data available on the crash, the methods used by the FBI to investigate (before they turned the final investigation over to the NTSB), the reconstruction of the wreckage, and information which the CIA may have had about incipient terrorist activity in the US in the five years before 9/11.

Kate Mayfield, a young FBI agent married to former NYPD investigator John Corey, was involved in the crash investigation, and after attending a memorial service for the victims, she interests her husband in the case. Forbidden to investigate further because the FBI has closed the case, Kate has never been able to reconcile the final explanations of the crash with information she uncovered through conversations with eyewitnesses, and Corey is soon "hooked" on the case. Demille minces no words in describing the internecine squabbles over power among the various investigative agencies from NYPD to the FBI and CIA. Various investigators hide suspicious information, suggesting a widespread coverup, and as Corey and Mayfield become the "heroes" of this novel, they do so at their own peril by refusing to believe in the honesty of their peers.

The key to the case here is a sex tape being made on the beach, just as the plane explodes. The couple involved, not married to each other, quickly leaves the beach, not wanting to be discovered as witnesses. They take the tape with them, a recording that shows an apparent missile striking the plane. As Corey investigates, trying to find out who they are and what might have happened to the tape, his own life and career, and that of his wife, are endangered, not by terrorists but by agencies of their own government.

Demille succeeds in creating an exciting novel which explores an alternative explanation for the crash. John Corey is well drawn--an iconoclast who is compelled to challenge the status quo--but except for a friend and his own wife, both of whom help him, the other characters, representing government agencies, are self-serving, if not downright hostile, secretive, and dishonest. The depiction of the investigation takes on cynical tones, not improved by the gratuitous, expedient ending. Interesting to read, if one can get past the idea that only Corey cares about what really happened, but disappointing in its one-sided view of the investigation. n Mary Whipple

The Gate House, 2008
Wild Fire, 2006
Up Country, 2002
The Lion's Game
Plum Island, 1997
The Gold Coast