Subterranean - James Rollins

   1999; 410 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Thriller & Suspense; Action-Adventure.  Overall Rating: 8½*/10.

 

    Antarctica.  The only continent that doesn’t support native life.  Animals like penguins and walruses may live there; but they have to get their sustenance from the surrounding oceans.

 

    It’s been that way for millions of years, but not forever.  Earth’s tectonic plates shift slowly but inexorably.  Antarctica wasn’t always stuck at the South Pole.  Theoretically, someday we will dig down through all that ice and look for traces of plant life in the form of fossils.  Maybe even animal life.

 

    But that’s somewhere in the future.  At least that’s what paleoanthropologist Ashley Carter thinks.  Until someone contacts her and wants her to travel down to Antarctica to check out a recently discovered underground cavern.

 

    Which was found to have abandoned cliff dwellings in its walls.

 

What’s To Like...

    Subterranean is an early book by one of my favorite Thriller authors, James Rollins.  It predates his more famous Sigma Force series, and utilizes his standard, and satisfying, plot structure:

    Assemble a team of heroes and send them off on an adventure,

    Scatter them, put them all in peril, and make one or more of them a baddie,

    Keep the storyline interesting by jumping from one hero to another,

    Toss plot twists aplenty into the tale,

    Use incredible timing to get the gang back together for an over-the-top ending.

 

    In addition to lots of thrills and spills, Rollins examines what might occur if an isolated landmass, in this case Antarctica, is given millions of years to follow its own separate path of evolution.  In the real world, the Galapagos Islands give us a glimpse of what can happen, so does the second excerpt, below.

 

    There are a bunch of creatures for our adventurers to meet and flee from, usually unsuccessfully.  Listing them here would be a spoiler, but my favorite one was nicknamed “Tiny Tim” and is very definitely not the urchin from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.

 

    Both the good guys and the baddies suffer some casualties along the way, and everything builds to an over-the-top, boffo ending.  All the plotlines get tied up, and there’s even some literary space for a sequel although I don’t think James Rollins ever penned one.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.3/5 based on 3,429 ratings and 767 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.02/5 based on 26,250 ratings and 946 reviews.

Excerpts...

    “I have a proposal to—”

    “Not interested.”  She pointed to the door.  “You and your entourage can hit the trail now.  Thanks anyway.”

    “If you’ll only lis—”

    “Don’t make me toss your butt outta here.”  She snapped her arms toward the screen door.

    “It pays a hundred grand for two months’ work.”

    “Just get your—”  Her arm dropped to her side.  Clearing her throat, she stared at Dr. Blakely, then raised an eyebrow.  “Now I’m listening.”  (pg. 10)

 

    She helped him sit up and raised a cup to his lips.  With shaky hands, he collected the cup and managed himself.

    “What happened?” he asked, glancing at Khalid, who now snored quietly from under the wet cloth.

    She explained the story of poisonous fungal spores while he finished his water.

    He handed her the cup.  “Is there anything down here that doesn’t want to eat us?”

    She grinned at him.  “This is a hostile environment.  I think for anything to survive it must learn to utilize the scarce resources to the fullest.  That means intense competition and varied modes of attack.”

    “Great.   What’s next?  Carnivorous butterflies?”  (pg. 206)

 

“Great, we’ve been captured by a bunch of kangaroos.”  (pg. 246)

    There’s not much to nitpick about in Subterranean.  I counted 21 instances of profanity in the first 10% of the book, and there were a couple of rolls-in-the-hay later on.  That’s pretty normal for a thriller novel.  I only caught one typo, breech/breach, so the editing was very good.

 

    The timing of some of the action scenes and heroes reuniting with each other seemed incredibly coincidental at times; such as Tiny Tim’s ultimate contribution to the action.  But hey, if it heightens the excitement, I’m all for it.  My biggest quibble concerns the stereotypical portrayal of one of the bad guys.  Just for once, can we please build a character from the Middle East who isn’t a brainwashed, murderous, zealot based on his religion and ethnicity?

 

    But I quibble.  Overall, I thought this was a solid debut Action-Adventure novel by James Rollins which showcases his literary and storytelling talents and hints at more exciting novels being penned by this author as he gets comfortable in this genre.

 

    8½ Stars.  One last thing.  I liked that the outcome of Subterranean would have a permanent impact on our world.  Creatures and beings we didn’t know are about to emerge  from the depths of Antarctica, and the only event to compare it to would be the (re)-discovery of the New World by Europeans in 1492.  I for one would love see what James Rollins could do with such a scenario.

Heat - Stuart Woods

   1994; 448 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Suspense; Thriller.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Strange things seem to be going on up in the little town of St. Clair, Idaho.  It appears to involve lots of money and lots of guns, all seemingly under the direction of some crazy coot named Jack Gene Coldwater.

 

    The United States Attorney General’s Office wants someone to investigate Coldwater’s activities.  Unfortunately, the last two agents that were sent to St. Clair have disappeared without a trace, and are presumed dead.

 

    The government needs to find somebody else to send up there, but ordering agents to go on suicide missions is bad for morale.  They need to find someone… erm… disposable.

 

    Say, how about that disgraced DEA agent Jesse Warden, currently serving time in Atlanta Federal Prison? He was convicted of stealing drug money and killing a fellow agent in the process to cover it up, and he’s been in solitary for 14 months now.  Let’s talk him into “volunteering.”

 

    If his cover gets blown and Coldwater offs him, so what?  If he somehow succeeds, we can grant him a pardon.  Alternatively, after he gives us the incriminating evidence we can expose him to Coldwater's goons, and let them have the pleasure of killing another government agent.

 

What’s To Like...

    Heat is a Thriller novel by Stuart Woods, an author whose work I’ve wanted to get acquainted with for a while now.  Woods, who died in 2022, was a prolific writer, with (according to Wikipedia) seven series under his belt, including the 64-volume "Stone Barrington" series, his most famous work.  Heat, however, is a standalone story.

 

    The plotline is straightforward: Jesse wants to infiltrate the inner circle of Coldwater’s trusted council, learn what their aims are, and hopefully find something illegal enough to exchange for a government pardon.  Along the way he meets an attractive and available woman (Jesse is a widower), searches for the daughter that’s been taken from him, and tries to outmaneuver his former DEA boss who’d love to see Jesse be exposed and killed.

 

    I liked the “religious cult” atmosphere that Stuart Woods explores.  St. Clair is a small town totally devoted to Coldwater’s apocalyptic visions.  Everyone in town goes to his church every Sunday, and all the children are schooled in his teachings.  It’s very reminiscent of David Koresh’s Branch Davidians cult in Waco, Texas, or Jim Jones’s cult in Jonestown, Guyana, both of which ended in tragedy.  Koresh and his followers died in an ATF raid in 1993; Jones’s followers “drank the Kool-aid” and committed mass suicide in 1978.  I loved the way Stuart Woods depicts this sort of brainwashing.

 

    All the standard action-adventure tropes are present.  Jesse and his attractive-yet-unattached landlord Jenny fall in love, one of Coldwater’s right-hand aides remains convinced Jesse is a government spy (which he is), and there’s a long, drawn-out, north-to-south chase scene down the entire state of Nevada.  For the record, I’ve made that trek recently; Nevada is fricking huge!

 

    The ending is so-so.  On the plus-side, it’s sufficiently exciting and even has a plot twist or two.  On the minus side, it strained my “believability” tolerance, most markedly when Jesse’s imminent death is averted by a conveniently-timed disturbance that distracts his killer.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 2,385 ratings and 242 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.11/5 based on 3,476 ratings and 138 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m moving up in the world,” Jesse said.  “Making nine bucks an hour, now, and I expect to get raised to ten any day.”  He told Kip about the promotion.

     “Glad to hear it, Jess.”

    “Not everybody is as happy as you are about my advancement,” Jesse replied.  “Fellow called Partain took exception.”

    “And what did you do about it?” Kip asked, sounding worried.

    “I hit him until he got over it,” Jesse replied.  (loc. 1630)

 

    “You know, Charley, it might have been interesting.  Up until the time we met in solitary, I had just been trying to stay alive.  But I think that after our chat, I would have started killing people, and you would have been first in line.”

    Bottoms grinned.  “I like you, Jesse; I always did.  You always handled yourself real good in the yard; took out some guys I’d have thought would have stomped you into the ground.  I’d have hated to kill you, but I’d have done it the minute you set foot out of that cell.  I’m glad our present circumstances don’t require me to do that.”

    “That’s sweet of you, Charley.”  (loc. 3736)

 

Kindle Details…

    At present Heat sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Dozens of Stuart Woods's books are available in e-book format, for the most part ranging in price from $7.99 to $14.99, and occasionally discounted to $1.99.

 

“Jesse, can you fly an airplane?”  “Sort of.”  (loc. 4670)

    I found some quibbles when reading Heat.  For those averse to R-rated stuff, there’s a moderate-but-acceptable amount of cussing (17 instances in the first 10%), a half-dozen or so racial epithets (which I expected), a roll-in-the-hay, and at least one cursory drug reference (coke).

 

    There were more typos than I’d expect in a book by a top-tier author: saia/said; night clothes/nightclothes; hanger/hangar, and four Weather by/Weatherby (Jenny’s last name) oopsies before someone belatedly noticed and started fixing them.

 

    But those are all trifles.  My big issue with Heat were the WTF’s.  The plotline was rife with them.  We eschew spoilers on this blog, but here are some of the mind-boggling conveniences:

 

    Jesse just happens to have lock-picking and safecracking skills, both of which he'll need during this mission.  Jesse’s "cover” identity is a real but dead person), and his first name also happens to be Jesse.  At one point Jesse needs to learn to fly an airplane, and one of the baddies obligingly teaches him.  Jesse somehow wins every fight he’s in, even against the goons in prison.  Last but not least, he's given a tour of Coldwater’s stronghold and then is  given the blueprints to it as well.

 

    I noted at least a dozen of these WTFs.  I could’ve sworn I was reading a Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt novel.  There's a reason why I don’t read Thrillers more often.

 

    6 Stars.  Admittedly, there are a lot of readers of this genre out there who love it when the action is over-the-top.  Clive Cussler caters to those fans with his ultra-popular Dirk Pitt series.  I read one book from that series (I forget which one) and felt no need to try a second.  OTOH, a coworker of mine has read them all, and wishes there were more in Dirk's 26-book (soon to be 27) adventures.

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 Odessa File - Frederick Forsyth

    1972; 329 pages.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres: Suspense-Thriller; Intrigue; Holocaust; Historical Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I learned it in high school History class, so it has to be true.  With the exception of a few Nazi officials who knew they would be executed as war criminals, almost all of the German civilians welcomed the liberating Allied armies.  Well, maybe not the Russian army so much, since they had some atrocities to avenge, but at least the American, British, and French soldiers.

 

    The problem is, if that’s so, how do we explain why so many Nazi war criminals managed to avoid being found, arrested, and tried?  Yeah, a few were caught and put on trial, including Hermann Goring and Adolf Eichmann.

 

    Some others fled to foreign countries, mainly to South America.  But most simply blended into the German populace with forged identities, and lived out their lives to a quiet and peaceful end.  How could that happen?

 

    Frederick Forsyth's The Odessa File presents a plausible explanation for such a travesty of justice.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Odessa File is a best-selling 1972 thriller/historical fiction novel where we follow Peter Miller, a German freelance reporter as he investigates the whereabouts of SS Captain Eduard Roschmann, aka “The Butcher of Riga”, the maniacal and savage commandant of a concentration camp located there.  The story takes place in 1963-64, primarily in places all over Germany, especially the Hamburg area, with occasional quick detours to places like Egypt and Israel.

 

    The book does a fantastic job of chronicling the post-World War 2 sentiments of the German people.  Not every German rejoiced that the Nazi personnel, particularly those that had been in the infamous SS Division, were now hiding out and posing as German civilians.  The titular “ODESSA” is an acronym for “Organisation der ehemaligan SS-Angehorigen”, which translates to “Organization of Former Members of the SS”, a (fictional) clandestine group that gives huge amounts of money, muscle, and resources to any former SS person who needs to become “invidible”.

 

    I liked that lots of real-world figures have parts in the story, including Simon Weisenthal (Nazi hunter), Anwar Sadat, General Meir Amit (Mossad), Reinhard Heydrich (Nazi), Bishop Alois Hudal (Nazi sympathizer), Bruno Streckenbach (SS general), and Peter Miller’s target, Eduard Roschmann.  You’ll also pick up a few basic German phrases along the way; chuckle at ancient (1970s) things like Telex, pensions, photostats and public telephones; and ;earn how to make a car bomb out of common household materials.

 

    The overall plot of the book is fairly straightforward.  Our protagonist sets out on his search for Roschmann, gets stonewalled by all sorts of German bureaucratic agencies, doggedly keeps at it, and gradually becomes a threat to Eduard Roschmann’s well-being, which calls for the Butcher of Riga to take appropriate countermeasures.

 

    It all builds to an exciting, twisty, and suspenseful climax.  Peter Miller survives and fulfills his mission, but not in the way you’d expect.  Not all the baddies die, but those that don’t, have to flee for their lives.  Things close with a “where are they now” epilogue that includes both fictional and real-world characters.

 

Ratings…
    Goodreads:  4.13/5 based on 58,363 ratings and 910 reviews.

    Amazon: 4.6/5 based on 508 ratings and 147 reviews

 

Excerpts...

    “The trouble with you, pal,” he told his reflection in one of Sigi’s brilliantly polished saucepans as he rinsed out the cup with his forefinger, “is that you are lazy.”

    He had been asked by a civilian-careers officer, at the end of his military service ten years earlier, what he wanted to be in life.  He had replied, “An idle rich man,” and at twenty-nine although he had not achieved it and probably never would, he still thought it a perfectly reasonable ambition.  (loc. 395)

 

    “He was killed, you know, shortly after that.  He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five.  His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.”

    “He must have been a remarkable man,” said Miller.

    Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement.  “Well, yes, some thought so.  Yes, indeed, some of us thought so.”

    “I mean,” continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, “he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.  He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria.”  (loc. 2085)

 

Kindle Details…

    Presently, The Odessa File sells for $6.99 at Amazon.  Frederick Forsyth has more than a dozen other novels in e-book format, including the highly-acclaimed thriller, The Day of the Jackal.  The prices for those range from $6.99 to $13.99.

 

“It’s a question of election mathematics.  Six million dead Jews don’t vote.  Five million former Nazis can and do, at every election.”  (loc. 2445)

    There’s little to quibble about in The Odessa File.  Cusswords are sparse, only six instances in the first 25% of the book.  There are a couple rolls-in-the-hay and two allusions to male excitement.

 

    I caught a couple of typos: Kaposs/Kapos, hose/those, rights/right, By-By/Bye-Bye, but those might have occurred when the book version was converted into e-book format.  And although the book is mostly written in "American" English, a couple of “British” spellings show up, including: disk jockey, whisky, and “waked up”.

 

    It should be noted that this is more of a Suspense/Intrigue tale, not an Action-Adventure.  Thrills-&-spills do show up, but not until the second half of the book, when Peter Miller has morphed from a nuisance into a threat to Roschmann.

 

    For those who are cinephiles, a movie version came out in 1974 starring Jon Voight and Maximilian Schell, although Wikipedia implies that its adherence to the book’s plotline is rather “loose”.

 

    That’s about it.  I found The Odessa File to be a great read, both as a work of historical fiction focusing on post-WW2 Germany and a page-turner.  This was my first book by Frederick Forsyth, who rarely discounts the e-book versions of his novels, but I will now be on the lookout for other works by him, including his equally famous thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

 

    9 Stars.  For those who wonder whether books and movies really have any significant impact in the real world, Wikipedia has this note about the 1974 film adaptation of The Odessa File: “After the film was released to the public, he [Eduard Roschmann] was arrested by the Argentinian police, skipped bail, and fled to Asuncion, Paraguay, where he died on 10 August 1977.”  All because of the movie.  Awesome!

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.

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.