Plot
In 1997, NYPD detective John Corey is on the back porch of his uncle's waterfront home on the North Fork of Long Island recovering from three gunshot wounds while working in his town of Manhattan, NY. He enjoys the fact that the tourist season is just about over so that it's just him and the locals. He listens to music while sitting in a chair and using binoculars to spy on people in a distant boat who are enjoying themselves. The local police chief, Sylvester Maxwell, comes to the back porch and asks Corey to act as consultant in a local murder investigation, as Corey is personally acquainted with the two victims, Tom and Judy Gordon, both employees on the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, a facility suspected of carrying out biological warfare research. They go to the house the victims owned, a waterfront property that appears to have been robbed or searched, and where the two victims have been shot in the head on their own dock. Corey concludes that the victims were near their killer because it is hard to hit a person in the head with one shot at such a range. They cannot find the bullet shells, but by the direction of the wounds conclude that the bullets are in the bay. Max is unhappy because although he's not a homicide detective, his expectations of Corey's findings were high. Beth Penrose, the Suffolk County police detective, arrives. Corey instantly figures out she's in charge of the case without her stating it. She yells at him a bit for being on the crime scene because he appears to be a civilian. He ignores Beth and searches the speed boat that the Gordons temporary docked. When he gets out of the boat she pulls his own gun on him and makes him state who he is. Just before he goes, he asks if they found the chest in the boat that the Gordons used as a trunk while boating; they reply that it's missing. Corey goes to the local bar and orders junk food. He is watching the game as Beth comes in. She invites him to come back to the Gordon house with her to see the government agents involved.
They return to the crime scene and go into the kitchen, where they meet George Foster, an FBI agent, and Ted Nash, who claims to represent the Department of Agriculture but whom Corey immediately recognises as a CIA agent [1] due to being at a crime scene at the late hour. They discuss theories of the deaths, such as the Gordons trading the deadly diseases to which they have access for money and using the boat chest as a container for the items. The TV shows news coverage of the murder and exaggerates the importance of the Gordons' work. Corey silently dislikes how the reporter exaggerates it because there is no public evidence of the work connecting them to biological warfare or theft. Corey is jealous of Beth liking Ted Nash. The two clash over who is the alpha male of the room. Beth, Corey, and Max are able to make Ted cave in to letting them go on Plum Island the next day. Corey then goes through the Gordons' book shelves and pulls out a map of the local boating water. He notices a mysterious code written on one of the pages. The next day he arrives early at the ferry station and sees George and Ted with the security director and other people in suits coming off the ferry, confirming his thoughts of a cover up. They do not see him and he gets on the ferry to Plum Island with the rest of the group from the previous night with Paul Stevens, the security director, who pretends he doesn't know Foster or Nash. They are brought to the island and given a bus tour. The group then walk through the long hallways with the head of the research center who has some humor, but seems to be scripted. The group meets a few scientists who are friends of Tom and Judy who were directing a project. The scientists also act like they are on a script and give cover up theories that suggest that the Gordons were underpaid government workers who stole a vaccine so they could "discover" it elsewhere and become rich and famous.
Ultimately, the killer is proven to be Frederick Tobin, owner of a local winery, whose motive was financial.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a humorous detective novel by English writer Douglas Adams, published in 1987. It is described by the author on its cover as a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-who dunnit-time travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic".
Nelson Richard DeMille is an American author of action adventure and suspense novels. His novels include Plum Island, The Charm School, and The Gold Coast. DeMille has also written under the pen names Jack Cannon, Kurt Ladner, Ellen Kay and Brad Matthews.
The Spy in Black is a 1939 British film, and the first collaboration between the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. They were brought together by Alexander Korda to make the World War I spy thriller novel of the same title by Joseph Storer Clouston into a film. Powell and Pressburger eventually made over 20 films during the course of their partnership.
Patty Cannon, whose birth name may have been Lucretia Patricia Hanly, was an illegal slave trader, murderer and the co-leader of the Cannon–Johnson Gang of Maryland–Delaware. The group operated for about a decade in the early 19th century and abducted hundreds of free Black people and fugitive slaves, along the Delmarva Peninsula, across multiple state lines to sell into slavery in southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi. The activity became known as the Reverse Underground Railroad.
Crime Story is an American crime drama television series, created by Chuck Adamson and Gustave Reininger and produced by Michael Mann, that aired on NBC, where it ran for two seasons from September 18, 1986, to May 10, 1988.
The Street with No Name is a 1948 film noir directed by William Keighley. A follow-up to The House on 92nd Street (1945), it tells the story of an undercover FBI agent, Gene Cordell, who infiltrates a deadly crime gang. Cordell's superior, FBI Inspector George A. Briggs, also appears in The House on 92nd Street. The film, shot in a semidocumentary style, takes place in the Skid Row section of fictional "Center City."
Catherine Tramell is a fictional character and the main antagonist of the film Basic Instinct (1992) and its sequel Basic Instinct 2 (2006). Catherine Tramell, created by writer Joe Eszterhas, is played by Sharon Stone in both films. In Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven, Catherine Tramell is a serial killer and love interest of detective Nick Curran; Basic Instinct 2 pairs her with the similarly troubled British psychologist Michael Glass.
Arthur Hohl was an American stage and motion-picture character actor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began appearing in films in the early 1920s. He played a great number of villainous or mildly larcenous roles, although his screen roles usually were small, but he also played a few sympathetic characters.
Night Fall is a 2004 novel by American author Nelson DeMille.
The Lion's Game is a 2000 novel by American author Nelson DeMille. It is the second of DeMille's novels to feature the detective John Corey, now working as a contractor for the fictional FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force in New York City. The 2000 novel The Lion’s Game is the sequel to Plum Island and is followed by the 2004 book Night Fall. The book also briefly mentions events from other DeMille novels like The Charm School and The Gold Coast, that aren't strictly part of the Corey-universe.
When Eight Bells Toll is a first-person narrative novel written by Scottish author Alistair MacLean and published in 1966. It marked MacLean's return after a three-year gap, following the publication of Ice Station Zebra (1963), during which time he had run several restaurants.
Timothy "Timmy the Bat" Mello, is a mobster associated with the Patriarca crime family.
The Devil's Henchman is a 1949 movie featuring Warner Baxter, Mary Beth Hughes, Mike Mazurki, and Regis Toomey. The film was written by Eric Taylor and directed by Seymour Friedman.
Dolores Claiborne is a 1995 American psychological thriller drama film directed by Taylor Hackford and starring Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, and David Strathairn. The screenplay by Tony Gilroy is based on the 1992 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The plot focuses on the strained relationship between a mother and her daughter, largely told through flashbacks, after her daughter arrives to her remote hometown on a Maine island where her mother has been accused of murdering the elderly woman for whom she had long been a care-provider and companion.
Jigsaw is a 1962 British black and white crime film written and directed by Val Guest and starring Jack Warner and Ronald Lewis. It is based on the police procedural novel Sleep Long, My Love by Hillary Waugh, with the setting changed from the fictional small town of Stockford, Connecticut, to Brighton, Sussex, while retaining the names and basic natures of its two police protagonists and most of the other characters. It was filmed with the full cooperation of the Brighton Borough Police, which was under the shadow of a major corruption scandal, and the East Sussex Constabulary.
Scream and Scream Again is a 1970 British science fiction conspiracy thriller film starring Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Alfred Marks, Michael Gothard, and Peter Cushing. It is based on the novel The Disorientated Man (1967) attributed to 'Peter Saxon', a house pseudonym used by various authors in the 1960s and 1970s.
House Rules (2010) is the eighteenth novel by the American author, Jodi Picoult. The novel focuses on a young adult male, Jacob Hunt, with Asperger's syndrome living in Townsend, Vermont, who is accused of murder. The novel follows the struggle between Jacob and his family, the law, and his disability.
The Panther is a 2012 novel by American author Nelson DeMille. It is the sixth of DeMille's novels to feature Detective John Corey, now working as a contractor for the fictional FBI Anti-Terrorist Task Force in New York City. The novel is the sequel to The Lion. The Panther is followed by DeMille's 2015 novel, Radiant Angel. Also featured in this novel is DeMille's other fictional character, Paul Brenner, who appears in The General's Daughter and Up Country.
No Man of God is a 2021 American crime mystery film directed by Amber Sealey and written by C. Robert Cargill, under the pseudonym of Kit Lesser. The film stars Elijah Wood, Luke Kirby, Aleksa Palladino and Robert Patrick. It is based on real life transcripts selected from conversations between serial killer Ted Bundy and FBI Special Agent Bill Hagmaier that happened between 1984 and 1989, and the complicated relationship that formed between them during Bundy's final years on death row.
