Plum Island

Plum Island is a novel by the American writer Nelson DeMille, published in 1997 and the first of his books about the detective John Corey.

Corey is convalescing, bored and pleased that the tourist season is over, when the chief asks him to consult on a double murder because the dead couple were people he knew. Both worked at the animal disease centre on Plum Island, and their house had been searched before they were shot, which turns a local crime into something with wider implications. Corey is a narrator with an opinion about everything, including his own injuries, the summer people and the federal agencies that arrive to take over, and DeMille uses that voice to keep the book light while the plot moves towards the possibility of stolen viruses and a market for them.

The novel introduced a character the author has used in several later books, and it was followed by The Lion's Game and then by a string of further investigations written in the same unmistakable voice.