Sun 14 Feb 2010
A Review by Walter Albert: DOUGLAS PRESON & LINCOLN CHILD – The Book of the Dead.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[2] Comments
DOUGLAS PRESTON & LINCOLN CHILD – The Book of the Dead. Vision, paperback reprint; first printing, July 2007. Originally published in hardcover by Grand Central Publishing, May 2006.
After I was irretrievably enmeshed in the web of terror skillfully spun by the authors, the friend who had recommended the novel rather off-handedly commented that I probably should have started with the first of the novels in the trilogy, rather than the last. I grumbled a bit at this piece of delayed information but came to the conclusion that I was already enjoying the book so much that I didn’t want to put it aside unfinished.
In any event, the trilogy traces the battle between the two Pendergast brothers, both of them brilliant, one of them a psychopath who will stop at nothing to achieve his aims. The setting of the final confrontation is a favorite of Preston and Child, the New York Museum of Natural History, and details the events leading up to the restoration of a long-sealed Egyptian tomb, culminating in a reception attended by New York’s social and political elite.
A series of horrific murders precede the opening, but they will pale in comparison with the carnage that will result if the plans of the psychopathic Pendergast brother succeed. The plans have been years in the making and the brother who might thwart them is incarcerated in a maximum security prison from which no one has ever escaped.
The authors’ novels tend to be outsize in their concept (and certainly in their length — this book is well over 600 pages), but the gothic imagination that fuels the plots will, if you’re willing to suspend some of your innate disbelief, override all your inhibitions. The novels are the stuff of nightmares, so beware, all you who enter their portals.
The Diogenes Trilogy (Pendergast Novels 5-7) —
Brimstone (2004).
Dance of Death (2005).
The Book of the Dead (2006).
Editorial Comment: Previously reviewed by Walter on this blog: The Cabinet of Curiosities, 2002, Pendergast #3.
February 15th, 2010 at 7:49 am
When you read BRIMSTONE, the first book in the trilogy, you will be delighted to find the villain of the piece is none other than Wilkie Collins’ Count Fosco from THE WOMAN IN WHITE, replete with white mice capering in his waistcoat.
Grandiose and gothic are good ways to describe Preston and Childs (they use the Museum of Natural History because Preston used to work there, see his DINOSAURS IN THE ATTIC). They bring a good deal of fun to the genre in Grand Guignol adventures that are virtually sui generis.
And there is more than a bit of humor there too. If you notice in BOOK OF THE DEAD at one point Pendergast is reading ICE LIMIT IV, a non-existent sequel to an earlier Preston and Childs novel.
The Pendergast novels and the trilogy in particular have something of the feel of Holmes and Moriarity or even Fu Manchu and Nayland Smith. It’s pure pulp imagination dressed up with bestseller flourishes and two of the great imaginations in the field. This one has everything from Egyptian terrors in the basement of the museum to a prison escape worth of the Count of Monte Cristo and a villain who might give Hannibal Lector a chill. I’m not sure this one could have been a single page shorter, or that I would have wanted it to be, which is quite a compliment for some of today’s bloated best sellers.
By all means read the other Pendergast books, and their non-series as well. They aren’t quite as good separately, but still well ahead of most of the genre. RIPTIDE is a particular favorite of mine if only because they find one of the most plausible and frightening excuses for a pirate curse I’ve ever encountered in fiction.
February 16th, 2010 at 10:07 am
You make a very strong case for the authors’ novels, both series and non-series. I did read “Brimstone,” with a memorable villain in Count Fosco, but I’ve not yet gotten around to the middle novel.