Verses For the Dead - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2018; 328 pages.  Book 18 (out of 22) in the “Agent Pendergast” series.  New Author? : No, and No.  Genres : Police Procedural; Thriller; Serial Killers.   Overall Rating: 8½/10.

 

    It’s a brand new day for Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast of the FBI.  For starters, he’s got a new boss, Walter Pickett, who admires Pendergast’s “successful investigation rate” but hates his attitude towards heeding authorities and working with others.

 

    So it’s no surprise that Pendergast also finds he’s been assigned to a new area: Miami, Florida.  Say goodbye to the Big Apple, Aloysius.  Say hello to The Sunshine State.

 

    That means Pendergast gets to work with a new partner, a Native American named A.B. Coldmoon.  Don’t ask him what the “A.B.” stands for; those are white man’s appellations.

 

    Oh well, it could be worse.  Some psycho killer could start slashing the throats of Miamians, cutting out their hearts, and leaving them on other graves.

 

    And also leave excerpts from classical works of literature, aka “Verses for the Dead”.

 

What’s To Like...

    I enjoyed the setting change for Verses For the Dead, even if it did mean meeting a whole slew of new characters and remembering which ones were Miami PD and which ones were Miami FBI.  Agent Coldmoon is developed into a worthy assistant for the quirky Pendergast.  Instead of being cast as a bumbling rookie, he impresses Aloysius with his investigative technique and shrewd deductions.

 

    As always, the case rapidly becomes more complex.  There are clues aplenty, but how do they fit together?  Road trips are taken, and bodies are exhumed.  Is the killer right-handed or left-handed?  Are some of the deaths suicides?  Why does Agent Coldmoon have a “malodorous chemical refinery” (Pendergast’s description, not mine) smell about him?

 

  Verses For the Dead is both a Medical Thriller and a Police Procedural, both of which  are among my favorite literary genres.  It was a treat to also learn a few phrases in Latin, Spanish, and even in Coldmoon’s native Lakota tongue, including “Atanikili” and “Philamayaye”.  Thank goodness for Google.

 

    The ending is delightfully 50-pages long, well thought-out, and filled with twists, thrills and nail-biting fights.  In other words, it’s vintage Preston & Child.  It’s also quite complicated, and the last two of the fifty chapters involve Pendergast answering the questions a Miami Herald reporter had, and which had puzzled me as well.  Verses For the Dead is both a standalone novel and part of a series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.6*/5, based on 10,948 ratings and 1,069 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.22*/5, based on 18,296 ratings and 1,605 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Empyrean (n.) : heaven; especially the highest part of heaven.

Others: Diener (n.); Iconoclast (n.); Persiflage (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    Something even louder than the music blasted one of her eardrums; she looked over to see a skinny, goateed guy in a post-punk outfit yelling at her.

    She turned to him. “What?”

    “I said, are you a parking ticket?” he yelled back.

    “Parking ticket?  What are you talking about?”

    “Because you’ve got fine written all over you!”  He laughed wildly, eyes wide.  (pg. 85)

 

    “Coffee, partner?”

    Another, longer pause.  Then Pendergast accepted the cup; took a small, tentative sip.  “The floral bouquet of poison sumac blooms first on the palate,” he announced.  “Followed by notes of diesel oil and a long finish of battery acid.”  And he handed the cup back.

    “Exactly the way I like it,” said Coldmoon, closing his eyes contentedly and downing the lukewarm beverage in a single gulp.  (pg. 251)

 

“Of all the would-be witnesses out last night, not one mentioned seeing a blood-spattered man carrying a hatchet and a human heart.”  (pg. 101)

    The profanity level in Verses For the Dead seemed lighter-than-usual for a Pendergast novel.  I counted just 13 instances in the first 20% of the book, four of which were f-bombs.  Maybe Miamians cuss less than New Yorkers.

 

    One reviewer was disappointed that there was no “is it natural or supernatural” aspect to the story, which is a much-loved Preston & Child trademark literary device.  He has a point, but at least they didn't awkwardly force it into the plotline.  Similarly, some of my favorite New York characters, such as Constance Greene, Vincent D’Agosta, and Proctor, only get a brief mention, but I have a feeling they’ll make a dramatic comeback in the upcoming books.

 

    Enough of the quibbling.  I’ve now read 15 books in this series, and have been hooked on it since Book One, Relic.  The mystery storylines are always unique, well crafted, twisty, and devoid of any slow spots.  The character development is always superb, especially Agent Pendergast.  The endings are always surprising and plot threads always get tied up.  Verses For the Dead is no exception.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last thing.  As with any Police Procedural, acronyms are commonplace.  Here OPR and ViCAP are encountered, but their full-length meanings are given.  Not so for TBI, which shows up twice, and which I couldn’t suss out on my own.  It stands for Traumatic Brain Injury.  Now you know.

Beyond The Ice Limit - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2016; 371 pages.  Book 4 (out of 5) in the “Gideon Crew” series.  New Authors? : No.  Genres : Thriller; Suspense; Save The World.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

 

    Eli Glinn has a score to settle.  With a meteorite.

 

    Five years ago the two of them crossed paths and the meteorite won.  It sank Eli’s boat, and more than a hundred people perished.  Eli was one of the survivors.

 

    You probably visualize a big blazing rock falling from the sky and slamming into the boat, but that’s not the way it happened.  Eli had hauled it up from the bottom of the ocean and stowed it in his ship.  When it slipped from its cradle, it caused an explosion and sank again to the bottom of the sea.

 

    Eli is going back to destroy it.  He’s not leaving anything to chance—he’s going to blow it up with a nuclear bomb he’s acquired.  He just needs to find someone who knows how to set up, and set off, an atomic bomb when it’s two miles deep in salt water.

 

    Hello, Gideon Crew.

 

What’s To Like...

    Beyond The Ice Limit is the penultimate book in Preston & Child’s Gideon Crew series, as well as the sequel to one of their other standalone thrillers, The Ice Limit.  As they mention in a short section titled “A Note to Our Readers”, they wrote this as a standalone story, which is important, since I hadn’t read The Ice Limit..

 

    The main storyline is whether Glinn, aided by Gideon, will carry out his mission to destroy the meteorite.  Sounds straightforward and easy, right?  Nope.  Things rapidly get more complicated.  In the five years that have passed since Encounter #1, the alien rock seems to have taken root and grown into a huge, treelike monstrosity.  Is it alive?  Is it sentient?  Is it a plant, an animal, or a machine?  Is it capable of communicating?  And perhaps most importantly, can it defend itself?

 

    The “human” plot threads are equally complex.  When crew members start dying, there is understandably more than a little discontent among their ranks., especially when Glinn seems determined to continue on regardless of how many of the rank-and-file members perish.  And since the whole excursion is a hush-hush affair, national navies cannot be called upon for support.

 

    I liked the “whale-speak” angle; it is a fascinating take on communicating with them.  There was also an “Alien” moment, if you remember that flick, and it scared me just as much this time around as it did when I watched the movie.  The titular “Ice Limit” is explained early on.  And Gideon will remember the phrase “let me touch your face” for the rest of his life.

 

    The ending is over-the-top, which is okay in a Thriller-genre tale.  It wasn’t particularly twisty, but the world is saved, thanks to Gideon’s valor, and he survives despite his computer simulation predicting his demise.  I don’t think a sequel will be penned, but there’s already an additional book in Gideon’s own series after this.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Stochastic (adj.) : randomly determined.

    Others: Rugose (adj.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5 based on 6,244 ratings and 1,024 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.37*/5 based on 1,743 ratings and 183 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “Four months ago, back when Garza first walked up to my fishing spot on Chihuahueños Creek and offered me a hundred thousand dollars for a week’s work, stealing the plans for some new kind of weapon off a defecting Chinese scientist—it was really this moment, this job, that you had in mind.”

    Glinn nodded.

    “And you want to use the nuke to kill a gigantic alien plant that is supposedly growing on the bottom of the ocean.”

    “In a nutshell.”

    “Forget it.”

    “Gideon,” said Glinn, “we’ve been through this tiresome dance several times before: your heated refusals, your storming out, and then your eventual return once you’ve thought it through.  Can we please skip all that?”  (pg. 19)

 

    “If there was no glitch, then obviously there was some sort of delay in the transmission, some kind of time lag.”

    “No delay.”

    “Come on.  What are you saying?”

    “What your hydrophone picked up was a direct acoustic sound coming through the water, at that moment.”

    “Impossible.”

    A shrug from Prothero, some scratching of his arm.

    “So you’re saying a dead person spoke,” Gideon pressed on.

    “All I’m saying is, there was no glitch.”

    “Jesus Christ, of course there was a glitch!”

    “Ignorance combined with vehemence doesn’t make it so.”  (pg. 132)

 

“Dr. McFarlane . . . is going to be our very own Cassandra.”  (pg. 213)

    I counted 13 cusswords in the first 20% of the book, which is reasonable for a Thriller novel, plus one roll-in-the-hay.  Amphetamines have a minor impact on the story, but drug-prudes will be happy to know they’re presented in a negative light.  That’s about it for R-rated stuff.

 

    I only saw two typos: image/imagine and Hcl/HCl.  That second one will only bug readers who are also chemists by trade, which includes me.

 

    My biggest issue was the pacing, which is a rare quibble for a Preston-&-Child novel.  The first quarter of the book, roughly 100 pages, just plods along as Gideon gets extensive training in properly manipulating a DSV (Deep Submergence Vehicle).  It got tiresome, but once that gets out of the way, the pace picks up nicely, and action abounds.

 

    Beyond The Ice Limit had lots of thrills to keep your interest, lots of scientific issues to contemplate, and even a bit of romance for the ladies.  I wouldn’t call it one of Preston & Child’s top novels, but it did meet my expectations for a Gideon Crew tale.

 

    7½ Stars.  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child collaborate on at least three Thriller series: Agent Pendergast, Nora Kelly, and Gideon Crew.  Of those, the latter one is the only one that doesn’t blow me away.  Its most recent book, The Pharaoh Key, was published in 2018, six years ago.  Maybe Gideon Crew doesn’t blow Preston and Child away either.

City of Endless Night - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2018; 374 pages.  Book 17 (out of 21) in the “Agent Pendergast” series.  New Author? : No, and No.  Genres : Suspense; Thriller.   Overall Rating: 8½/10.

 

    The body of a young women has been found in an abandoned garage in New York City, under a pile of leaves.  Well, that’s not so unusual, there are some rough neighborhoods there, and Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta knows this is one of them.

 

    Unfortunately, the young lady has been identified, and she’s a well-known, rich, young, spoiled socialite.  Great news fodder for the local tabloids.  That’s going to put a lot of pressure on the NYPD to solve this quickly, and in particularly on D’Agosta, who’s in charge of the investigation and has just arrived at the crime scene.

 

    He’s not particularly surprised when his friend, Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast also shows up.  Pendergast has some amazing deductive talents, and D’Agosta welcomes any help he can get.  Maybe it was a mob hit.  Maybe drugs were involved.

 

    Let’s just hope it’s not the work of a serial killer.  Because whoever did this also decapitated the corpse.  And took the severed head away for some unfathomable reason.

 

What’s To Like...

    If you like the idea of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child returning to the tried-and-true formula of FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast teaming up with Lieutenant Vinnie D’Agosta to solve a series of brutal murders, you’ll love City of Endless Night.  Connie Swanson is a no-show, and Constance Greene and Laura Hayward only make cameo appearances.

 

    It’s not a spoiler to reveal that a string of murders-by-decapitation follow the initial one described above.  Pendergast’s normally reliable Holmesian deductions are stymied by a seemingly lack of killing pattern, which opens the door to possible multiple and/or copycat murderers, or even random slayings just to blur the killer's motives.

 

    There are several secondary plotlines that bolster our protagonists’ sleuthing.  Tabloid reporter Bryce Harriman decries the lack of progress in the investigation, and comes up with a whodunit theory of his own, which even Pendergast has to admit has merit.  Harriman also coins the titular phrase “City of Endless Night” to describe a city terrified by a plethora of killings that the police seem to be unable to solve.  Meanwhile, an ex-Jesuit priest stirs the passions of the populace by reinventing the historical “Bonfire of the Vanities”.  I found it fascinating how Preston & Child smoothly blended both of those plot threads into the main storyline.

 

    As with any Pendergast thriller, the pacing is quick, plot twists abound, and our protagonists teeter on becoming the next victims.  At least one recurring character in the series fails to make it to the end of the book.  I liked that the perpetrator(s) are just as cunning and resourceful as our heroes.

    The chapters are short: 66 of them plus an epilogue to cover 374 pages.  The ending is 100 pages of excitement and thrills.  Pendergast finds himself being forced to play and badly outwitted in a deadly game where only an adjustment in his usual thought processes will keep him alive.  All of the plot threads are nicely tied up.  City of Endless Night is both a standalone novel and a part of a great series.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 12,771 ratings and 1,287 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.07*/5, based on 18,763 ratings and 1,718 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “Our private investigators have submitted a preliminary report on Harriman.”

    “Give me the short version.”

    “All reporters are of questionable character, so I’ll leave out the minor sins and peccadillos.  Aside from being a muckraking, ambulance-chasing, rumormongering, backstabbing journalist, the man is a straight arrow.  A preparatory school product who comes from old, old money—money that is petering out with his generation.  The bottom line is that he’s clean.  No prior convictions.  No drugs.”  (pg. 135)

 

    “We must understand the anomalies before we can understand the patterns in what followed.  Why, for example, did somebody take the head twenty-four hours after the girl was murdered?  Nobody seems troubled by this anymore, except for me.”

    “You really think it’s important?”

    “I think it’s vital.”  (pg. 237)

 

“It’s only hubris if I fail.” (Julius Caesar)  (pg. 258)

    The quibbles in City of Endless Night are minor.

 

    There’s a fair amount of cussing: 29 instances in the first 10% of the book.  I noted eight different cusswords utilized, including a couple of f-bombs and a sexual allusion.  Preston and Child will never be accused of penning a cozy murder-mystery novel.

 

    The character-building of Bryce Harriman is stereotypical, as shown in the first excerpt above.  Just once I’d like to see a tabloid reporter that turns out to be a valuable ally of a crime investigator.  Also, if you like the “is it natural or supernatural?” spin that Pendergast novels occasionally have, that’s totally absent here.  Lastly, dogs die.

 

    But I pick at nits.  City of Endless Night is a strong entry in the Agent Pendergast series, a real page-turner and a welcome rebound after what I considered a subpar previous offering, The Obsidian Chamber, and which is reviewed here.  But that was a rare exception to the fine books Preston & Child turn out.  I’ve been hooked on this series for several decades, and am still a half-dozen books away from being caught up.

 

    8½ Stars.  For those who think that the “Bonfire of the Vanities” scene is too outrageous to be believable, I once attended a “book/music/movie burning” here in the greater Phoenix area.  LPs, VHS tapes, and paperbacks were heaped into pile, battered by zealot wielding a sledgehammer, then put to the torch via a liberal helping of lighter fluid.  All in the name of the Jesus.  That was 30 years ago or so.  Today it's 2023, and we’re seeing an upsurge in book-banning.  A present-day “Bonfire of the Vanities” event seems to get more plausible each passing day.

Still Life With Crows - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2003; 435 pages.  Book 4 (out of 20, soon to be 21) in the “Agent Pendergast” series.  New Author? : No and No.  Genre : Suspense; Thriller; Natural or Supernatural?.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

 

    There’s a serial killer loose in Medicine Creek, Kansas.  Sheriff Dent Hazen thinks it’s some out-of-town psycho since he knows everybody in Medicine Creek, and none of them fit the profile of a psychopath.

 

    He’s a little perturbed that Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI has just shown up in Medicine Creek and is offering to “assist” in the investigation.  This is Hazen’s case, and he’s not one to share the glory with anyone else, especially some outsider.

 

    Although come to think of it, it is a bit odd that the FBI should take an interest in events in Medicine Creek.  And a phone call to the Kansas FBI office indicates they didn’t send any of their agents there.  Now that he thinks about, Sheriff Hazen realizes that Pendergast and the serial killer seem to have arrived upon the scene at about the same time.

 

    Maybe this "Agent Pendergast" and the serial killer are one and the same!

 

What’s To Like...

    Still Life With Crows is an early installment in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s fantastic “Agent Pendergast” series, and introduces a recurring character, Corrie Swanson, a Goth-dressing teenager who can’t wait till she’s legally old enough to leave boring old Medicine Creek behind and move somewhere else.  Pendergast hires her to be his personal assistant on the case, tapping into her firsthand knowledge of all the locals, since he’s convinced the murderer is one of them.

 

    As usual, the crime-mystery aspect is skillfully constructed.  Agent Pendergast is a “Sherlock Holmesian” type of sleuth and it’s always fun to tag along with him and try to solve the case before he does.  Here, the list of suspects and motives is lengthy.  I thought I solved the case a half-dozen times, none of which turned out to be correct.  There’s also a nice touch of “is it natural or supernatural?” to the mystery, which I always enjoy.

 

    I also liked that all of the characters were “gray”.  Sheriff Hazen may be uncooperative with Pendergast and Corrie, but when things come to a head, he shows a dogged determination to uncover the killer, even if it proves him wrong.  Similarly, the killings may be horrific, but those responsible for the carnage do have a few redeeming qualities.

 

    There were a couple of neat music references: NIN, Tool, and an obscure (for me, at least) group called Kryptopsy.  You can follow the step-by-step instructions to learn how to pick a lock, which might come in handy, and walk through a slaughterhouse for turkeys, which might cause you to eat just a salad on Thanksgiving Day.  The mention of “shoo-fly pie” brought back childhood memories, and being a chemist, I loved the mention of “C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁” as part of the investigation.

 

    The ending is nicely drawn out, being several chapters long, and suitably exciting and gory.  The final chapter is an Epilogue, with a couple surprising plot twists just when you thought things were winding down.  All the story threads are tied up, and the reasons for some of the ritualistic slayings will make your jaw drop.  For the most part, I’ve been reading this series in order, but it isn’t necessary.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Phreatic (adj.) : relating to or denoting underground water in the zone of saturation (beneath the water table).

Others: Parfleche (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 2,562 ratings and 861 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.20*/5, based on 35,775 ratings and 1,844 reviews.

 

Things That Sound Dirty But Aren’t…

    “Miss Swanson, would you kindly hold the flashlight while I examine the posterior of this dog?”  (loc. 1313)

 

Excerpts...

    “Only a dipshit would stay in a town like this.”

    There was a pause.

    “Miss Swanson?”

    “What?”

    “I can see that an insufficient, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four-letter words add power to language.”

    It took Corrie a moment to parse what Pendergast had said.  “’Dipshit’ isn’t a four-letter word.”

    “That depends on whether you hyphenate it or not.”  (loc. 893)

 

    “Have you ever heard of a memory palace?”

    “No.”

    “It is a mental exercise, a kind of memory training, that goes back at least as far as the ancient Greek poet Simonides.  It was refined by Matteo Ricci in the late fifteenth century, when he taught the technique to Chinese scholars.  I perform a similar form of mental concentration, one of my own devising, which combines the memory palace with elements of Chongg Ran, an ancient Bhutanese form of meditation.  I call my technique a memory crossing.”

    “You’ve totally lost me.”  (loc. 3249)

 

Kindle Details…

    Still Life With Crows presently sells for $10.99 at Amazon.  The other books in the series range in price from $7.99 to $11.99.

 

“I’d rather be sucking gibs out of a turkey than ending up gibs in a field myself.”  (loc. 2376)

    I’m admittdly hooked on this series, so the quibbles are minor.

 

    Be aware that Still Life With Crows contains a goodly amount of cussing.  I counted 27 instances in the first 10%.  That’s a higher rate than I remember for other books that I’ve read in this series.  Also, there are multiple killings in the storyline, and we sometimes get to witness the victim’s final moments, with the requisite blood and gore.  This is not a cozy mystery.

 

    The reader gets to witness a truckload of turkeys getting killed in the slaughterhouse.  I once had to tour a beef slaughterhouse in Texas as part of my job.  It’s the only time in my adult life that I seriously considered becoming a vegetarian.  To boot, a couple of dogs die along the way, in brutal fashion.  

 

    Finally, there’s a brief mention of a place in Arizona called “Leisure”.  I live in Arizona; I’ve never heard of any place with that name.  We do have a retirement community in the Phoenix area called “Leisure World”.  I suspect that what was being referenced.

 

    That’s about it for the nitpicking.  Overall, I thought Still Life With Crows was a great Suspense-Thriller tale.  For me, it was a page-turner, and I use that term sparingly.  Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are still churning out the books in this series at the rate of about one per year, and that’s not counting several spin-off series.  I don’t know how they do it.

 

    9 Stars.  One last childhood memory.  The phrase “hawked up a loogie”, gets used early in the book.  I can attest that as a young lad, the ability to perform that feat, with the loogie having the optimal density and traveling a creditable distance, was a sure way of gaining the respect and awe of my fellow male classmates.

The Obsidian Chamber - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

   2016; 408 pages.  New Authors? : No & No.  Book 16 (out of 20) in the Pendergast series.  Genres : Suspense; Thriller.  Overall Rating: 5½*/10.

 

    The spacious mansion is eerily silent, and that suits Constance Greene just fine.  The butler Proctor, and the housekeeper Mrs. Trask, have both taken temporary leave from their duties.  Mrs. Trask is attending to a sick relative, Proctor left with no explanation, although his departure seems to have been a hasty and unplanned one.

 

    Of course, the owner of the mansion, who also serves as Constance’s guardian, the FBI special agent Aloysius Pendergast, is also missing and presumed dead.  He was swept out to sea while working on a case with Constance a couple weeks ago and undoubtedly drowned.  The FBI conducted an intensive search, but it came up empty, finding neither a dead nor alive Pendergast.

 

    Constance now wanders the mansion halls alone until Proctor and Mrs. Trask return.  She’s in no danger, the estate’s security system is incredibly thorough, and besides no visitors ever come calling.

 

    So it’s quite the shock when some secret admirer starts to woo her, leaving strange gifts for her like a book of love poetry, a feather, a bottle of champagne, and romantic notes.  How in the world did he get past all the security?  Outside of the servants, only Aloysius could do that, and he’s dead.  Even if somehow he survived, romancing just isn't something he would ever do.

 

    So if he’s not the mystery suitor, who else could it be?

 

What’s To Like...

    There are multiple storylines in The Obsidian Chamber to keep you turning the pages.  We start out with Proctor’s abrupt departure, with frequent cutaways to the wooing of Constance.  The equally important plot thread, Pendergast’s whereabouts, is then initiated.  It's not a spoiler to reveal that, since Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child have dubbed this the “Pendergast series” and there’s four more books after this one, which wouldn't work if Aloysius is a corpse.  After that, the last main plotline is introduced: the FBI’s investigation into the Pendergast's demise.

 

    As always, the action and plot twists begin immediately, here with a protracted, 68-page chase that starts at Pendergast’s mansion in Harlem and spans several continents.  I liked that its first stop was the fine city of Teterboro, New Jersey.  My company used to have an important customer there, and I once had to drive the New York and New Jersey thoroughfares to call on them, capped by a timely slam into the New York City 5 o’clock rush hour traffic.  It was quite the hair-raising experience.

 

    Preston & Child never skimp on a variety of exotic settings for these stories.  Here we mostly travel up and down the North American east coast, with brief stops in Europe, and southern Africa.  We are also treated to some Latin classical literature (the poems of Catullus), Afrikaans dialogue (quick, name any other book you’ve read that used that language), and conversational French, including several cusswords plus the esoteric insult “del glouton souduiant!”, for which I was unable to find a precise translation, but it will definitely land you in a fight.

 

    I liked the brief music reference to three extremely obscure, but real, classical composers: Ignaz Brull, whom I've actually listened to, Adolf von Henselt, and Friedrich Kiel.  The book’s title is first referenced at about 60%-Kindle, and plays an important role in the tale.  I finally learned what the initials in the protagonist’s name, A.X.L. Pendergast, stand for, although I’m sure that information was given in earlier books as well.

 

    The ending is so-so at best.  It accomplishes its basic task – Pendergast successfully rescues Constance, which of course was the obvious culmination.  I didn’t find it particularly exciting or twisty.  All the major characters live to see another day, and I was disappointed in how the fate of the main baddie was resolved.  Didn’t any of the good guys ever watch those Austin Powers movies?  Don’t they know what to do when you capture your main adversary?

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.5*/5, based on 2,561 ratings.

    Goodreads: 3.97*/5, based on 14,884 ratings and 1,378 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Palapa (n.): an open-sided dwelling with a thatched roof made of palm leaves.

Others: Cilice (n.); Incunabula (n.).

 

Excerpts...

    “Mr. Longstreet, these men are clearly not stupid.”

    At this, Longstreet unfolded himself from his chair in a sort of easygoing way, then strolled to the front of the room.  “I’m sorry to be blunt, Agent Spann, but I believe this plan of yours will pretty much guarantee Pendergast’s death.”

    Spann stared at Longstreet.  “I respectfully disagree.  This is classic, exhaustively researched and tested SOP.”

    “Which is exactly why it will fail.”  (loc. 1497)

 

    The feeling of surrealness overwhelmed her again, seeing him sitting in a leather wing chair, smiling in domestic content as he removed a bottle of champagne from a silver ice bucket and poured two glasses, offering one to her.

    “Nineteen ninety-five Clos d’Ambonnay, by Krug,” said Diogenes, raising his glass and touching the rim to hers.

    “Good champagne is wasted on me.”

    “Only until you develop your taste.”  (loc. 3000)

 

DeJesus was a reliable man, but about as intelligent as a side of beef.  (loc. 1211)

    The writing is as always superb, but the storytelling is another matter.

 

    For starters, that opening chase scene is entertainingly quick-paced, but the timing involved in each stage of it is incredibly far-fetched.  I’d forgive that if it was important to the storyline, but it isn't.  Proctor is removed to a half-a-world-away locale, apparently for no other reason than to get him out of the house.

 

    The same letdown arises with the leadership of the FBI probe.  The guy officially in charge, Agent Spann, gets upstaged by a higher-up, Agent Longstreet.  I expected to see some departmental infighting throw spanners into the works, but no, Spann just fades into oblivion and Longstreet performs investigative miracles.

 

    I was shocked when Proctor, alone and in the wilds of a foreign country, brutally stabs one of the locals there, not once but twice, and based on no more than a suspicion that he’s legitimately withholding confidential customer information.  Really?  I expect the bad guys to engage in aggravated assaults, and they do, but not one of the heroes.

 

    Also, it must be nice to have both the FBI computer-geek team and Aloysius’s personal hacker buddy available and capable of tracking down shady business dealings and the whereabouts of anyone, at any place or time, no matter how encrypted that data might be.

 

    Lastly, there’s the matter of the main storyline itself, which in this series usually involves saving the world, solving a murder, stopping a monster, or capturing a psychopath.  Here, Pendergast is stalking his ward Constance, who *willingly* took off with someone else.  You couldn’t even make a kidnapping charge stick against the baddie, and any information about his misdeeds would never be allowed into a trial.

 

    Still, let’s keep things in perspective.  The Obsidian Chamber is the thirteenth book I’ve read in this series, and the first one that failed to thrill me.  It kind of felt like Preston & Child “mailed this one in”, but hey, they’re still batting 12-for-13, and that’s impressive.  The high Goodreads and Amazon ratings notwithstanding, it appears a lot of other reviewers were likewise disappointed in this book.  The big question is whether this was just an anomaly, or marks the beginning in the decline of the quality of this series.  We shall see.  The next book, City of Endless Night, is on my TBR shelf.

 

    5½ Stars.  One last vocabulary tidbit.  Around 40%-Kindle a nautical term comes up referring to a part of a ship’s deck: gunwale.  It’s not the first time I’ve come across it in a novel, but it’s not a word I’d ever used in conversation.  Mentally, I’ve always pronounced it “gun-whale”, but it turns out it rhymes with “tunnel”.  Funnily enough, when it crops up again a short time later, it is respelled, phonetically and incorrectly, as “gunnel”.  I'm now left wondering how many other words that I'm mispronouncing because I only run into them when reading.

Old Bones - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

   2019; 369 pages.  New Authors? : No.  Genre : Archaeology; Action-Intrigue; Historical Mystery.  Overall Rating : 7½*/10.

    The ill-fated Donner expedition achieved dubious but lasting fame when they became stranded in the high Sierra Nevada mountains during the brutal winter of 1846-47 and had to resort to cannibalism to keep from starving.

    Based on information supplied by a direct descendant of one of those pioneers, archaeologist Dr. Nora Kelly has applied for a grant to search for the campsite of a small group of the Donner party that splintered off.  Grants are generally hard to get, but Nora is optimistic since there are  rumors that one of the settlers was carrying a chest of gold coins on the trip, with a present-day worth of twenty million dollars.  Greed creates grant money.

    Meanwhile, newly-graduated FBI Agent Corrie Swanson grows weary of her agency apprenticeship, and has finally been given an investigation of her own to pursue.  Someone has dug up an old historical grave and made off with the upper half of the corpse.  The graveyard is on Federal land, and that means the FBI has jurisdiction.

    Nora and Corrie don’t know it, but they’ve both worked in the past with another FBI guy – Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.  That might be an ice-breaker when the two of them cross paths in the Sierra Nevada wilderness and are forced to team up.

    But both have headstrong personalities and they might find each other to be uncooperative and arrogant. I wonder how Aloysius would handle this.

What’s To Like...

    Both Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson have previously been protagonists in Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child novels, Nora in Thunderhead (reviewed here), and Corrie in White Fire (reviewed here).  In Old Bones they now seem to be “promoted” to a series of their own, one that will presumably have a heavy emphasis on archaeology, which I count as a plus.  It will be interesting to see how Preston and Child come up with enough old ruins and baddies to keep our two protagonists busy.

    There's a bunch of mysteries and intrigue here to keep your interest.  Will the “Lost Camp” of the Donner party be found?  Was there really a chest of gold, and if so, will it be found?  What does a murder in Paris in the prologue have to do with anything?  Who’s stealing the corpses, and why?  And finally, why are people in Nora’s archaeological expedition turning up dead?

    I like the initial interplay between Nora and Corrie when they meet.  You’d expect them to be palsy-walsy right away, and that isn’t the case.  Neither one of them “plays well with others”, especially with their underlings and overlings.  Yet I felt that Old Bones portrays both characters at their best (so far), and I’m guessing they both will be learning tact and finesse as the series progresses.  

    The mention of New Hampshire’s “The Old Man of the Mountain” brought back pleasant childhood memories.  It’s a shame that it has since fallen down.  You'll l;earn a little bit of French from the story, including a cuss phrase.  There’s even a small amount of the patented Preston-&-Child motif “is it natural or supernatural?”  No one does that better than those guys.

    The ending is somewhat predictable yet suitably exciting.  There were a couple of plot twists to keep me on my toes, and I was only half-right about who the perp was.  Aloysius Pendergast only has a small cameo appearance, and it isn’t until the epilogue.  His main purpose seems to be toquickly and cerebrally solve the remaining unresolved puzzles.

Excerpts...

    “How is it possible,” he asked, “that a man as experienced in the wilderness as Peel would fall off a cliff like this?”

    “Late at night,” Wiggett replied.  “The moon had set.  He’s collecting rocks for his grave.  He’s agitated, upset, not thinking clearly.”

    “Maybe even had a drink or two,” Clive added.

    “Peel didn’t drink.”  (pg. 226)

    He raised his head and cleared his throat.  “Samantha Carvilleae ossua heic.  Fortuna spondet multa multis, preastat nemini, vive in dies et horas, nam proprium est nihil.”

    Corrie looked at Pendergast.  “What exactly does that mean?”

    “Here lie the bones of Samantha Carville.  Fortune makes promises to many, keeps them to none.  Live for each day, live for the hours, since nothing is forever yours.”

    “That’s rather dark,” said Corrie.

    “It’s a favorite quote of my ward, Constance.  Besides, the graveside is no place for pleasantries.”  (pg. 362)

“You grow up thinking everything’s fine and bad things happen to other people, and then, out of the blue, life drops a piano on you.”  (pg. 147 )

    There are a couple of things to nitpick about.  There’s some cussing in any Preston & Child novel, but here it felt excessive, especially in the early chapters.  I didn’t feel like it added much to the book’s “feel”, and I'm wondering if the authors are trying to establish a "tone" for the series.

    Also, it seemed like it took a while for the storyline to get going.  The archaeology doesn’t start until page 143, and the first small bit of gold isn’t found until several pages after that.  But perhaps this is inevitable when starting a new series.  Characters need to introduced, their backstories need to be recounted, and settings need to be described.  But in any event, after the first gold coin is found, everything picks up nicely.

    I also would’ve appreciated a “what’s real and what’s fiction” section at the end of the book.  There is a short “Note To The Reader” section included, but in a nutshell, it says some of this is true, some of this is made-up, go look it up yourself.  Which I did.

    Overall, I think Old Bones is a solid start to new series by these two writers.  It won't outshine their Agent Pendergast series, but it's better than their Gideon Crew tales.  If you can make it through the first 150 pages of requisite world-building, you'll find the rest of the story to be of vintage Preston & Child quality.

    7½ Stars.  If you’re not familiar with it, the “Donner history” is given in chapter 4.  I was surprised to learn that there were quite a few survivors.  The Wikipedia article (the link is here) says 48 out of 87 lived through it.  So while some cannibalism certainly occurred, it never got down to a “just the two of us left, and one of us needs to eat the other” dilemma.  Too bad.  That might have made for a fascinating story.

Thunderhead - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

    1999; 533 pages.  New Authors? : No and no.  Genre : Suspense; Thriller; Native American Literature; Archaeology.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Nora Kelly has archaeology in her genes.  Seriously.  Her father, Padraig “Pat” Kelly, was an archaeologist, and he passed on his passion for the science to his daughter.

    That happened a long time ago.  Her father's been missing ever since he went on an expedition sixteen years ago, searching for the semi-mythical “Lost City of Quivira”.   Everyone has long given up on finding him alive.

    Nora has a comfortable, albeit humdrum, job as a teacher at the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute.  She’s just an assistant archaeologist, so heading up an expedition of any import is only a distant dream.

    So she was both surprised and alarmed when she was recently attacked as she routinely checked on her father’s long-abandoned ranch.  The assailants were hideous creatures, with penetrating red eyes, cloaked in animal skins, and demanding Nora give them some sort of letter from her father.  Nora was lucky to escape with her life, and was left without a clue as to what letter they were talking about.

    Naturally, said letter did turn up shortly thereafter, although it appears to have been written a long time ago.  In it, Pat Kelly relates his excitement, convinced that he had found Quivira.

    But that was many years ago, and nothing came of it.  Why would anyone be upset about such a letter?  And more importantly, why would anyone mail it after a wait of sixteen years?

What’s To Like...

    Thunderhead is a fairly early collaboration between Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and is not part of their popular Agent Pendergast series, although a journalist here, Bill Smithback, is also in the first two Pendergast books, Relic and Reliquary.  The challenge for the two authors was to imbue an archaeological expedition, which is an inherently tedious undertaking, with thrills and spills every step of the way.  They succeed admirably.

     I counted six mysteries for Nora to deal with:  a.) solving the mystery of her dad’s disappearance; b.) searching for Quivira; c.) figuring out why someone stole both her hairbrush and her dog; d.) are Nora’s attackers natural or supernatural?; e.) why do it smell of flowers whenever they're near?; and f.) finding out who mailed dad’s letter after a 16-year delay.  Happily, all of these plot threads are resolved, although a couple of them aren’t tied up until the epilogue.

    My boyhood dream was to become an archaeologist, so this kind of story always resonates with me.  I’m also a history buff, so the heavy tie-in to the Anasazi culture was also a big plus.  The excavation portion of the story seemed realistic, despite the storytelling need to add lots of action and intrigue into it.

    Preston & Child use a number of settings besides the expedition itself into the story, and this helps keep things from bogging down.  Nora’s brother, Skip, has his hands full back in their hometown Santa Fe; a solitary Native American who likes to go camping by himself in the Utah desert also figures into the tale; the marina from whence the expedition embarked has a couple scenes as well, and of course, the baddies have their own secret places to lurk and spring from.

    I liked the character development.  All the players come in various shades of gray, which made guessing who would live and who would die quite the challenge.  Nora herself has some character flaws that surface as she leads the expedition into the outback.  I smiled at the nods to Waiting for Godot and the artist Magritte, and the titular thunderhead that shows up late in the story.  As with any Preston & Child offering, there’s a fair amount of cussing, one or two rolls-in-the-hay, and lots of violence.

    The ending is up to the authors’ usual standards.  It’s tense, exciting, and full of action.  I wouldn’t call it very twisty, but I thought the bittersweet epilogue was done quite well.  This is a standalone story, and except for the presence of Smithback, not associated with any other P&C stories.

Kewlest New Word...

Zoomorphic (adj.) : having or representing animal forms or gods of animal forms.

Others : Frowsy (adj.); Clonus (n.); Talus (n.; the rock formation, not the bone)

Excerpts...

    “Coprolite expert, too,” said Aragon, nodding toward Black.

    “Coprolite?”  Smithback thought for a moment.  “Isn’t that fossilized shit, or something?”

    “Yes, yes,” Black said with irritation.  “But we work with anything to do with dating.  Human hair, pollen, charcoal, bone, seeds, you name it.  Feces just happens to be especially informative.  It shows what people were eating, what kind of parasites they had-“

    “Feces,” said Smithback.  “I’m getting the picture.”

    “Dr. Black is the country’s leading geochronologist,” Nora said quickly.

    But Smithback was shaking his head.  “And what a business to be in,” he chortled.  “Coprolites.  Oh, God.  There must be a lot of openings in your field.”  (pg. 127)

    “My village,” he said, gesturing northward, “is that way.  Nankoweap.  It means ‘Flowers beside the Water Pools’ in our language.  I come out here every summer to camp for a week or two.  The grass is good, plenty of firewood, and there’s a good spring down below.”

    “You don’t get lonely?” Smithback asked.

    “No,” he said simply.

    “Why?”

    Beiyoodzin seemed a little taken aback by his directness.  He gave Smithback a curiously penetrating look.  “I come here,” he said slowly, “to become a human being again.”

    “What about the rest of the year?” Smithback asked.  (pg. 323)

“Dead reckoning,” Smithback murmured.  “Never did like the sound of that.”  (pg. 142)

    There’s never much to quibble about in a Preston-&-Child novel.  The action starts quickly: by page 6 a death struggle is already underway, but after that things slow down a bit, as Nora works to gets funding for the expedition, and outfits it.

    Quadrupeds generally do not fare very well in the story; PETA enthusiasts will probably get in a tizzy over some of the scenes.  And a few of the plot threads were resolved just a tad bit too conveniently, especially those addressed in the epilogue.

    But I pick at nits.  Thunderhead is a fine offering from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and I enjoyed almost as much as any of the Agent Pendergast books.  Devotees to that series will be entertained with this one as well.

    8 Stars.  The search for Quivira is a historical fact.  Various Spanish explorers in the 16th and 17th centuries searched in vain for it, most notably Coronado.  The Wikipedia article about it can be found here.