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Monday, June 29, 2009
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have finally done what not even uber-villain Diogenes Pendergast could achieve: they have killed off a main character. No head-fake like the supposed murder but really just critically injured Margo Green in Dance of Death. No, this is the real thing. In the opening chapter of the slow burn new thriller Cemetery Dance, NY Times reporter and longtime Preston/Child character Bill Smithback is killed. As in dead. Forever. Sort of.
What begins as an intensely personal case for Preston/Child regulars NYPD Homicide Detective Vincent D'Agosta and FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast soon drags them deeper into the most dangerous case of their careers. Given the amount of scary ass shit they have dealt with in the past this is saying something. Trouble starts when the primary suspect in Smithback's murder, seen on multiple security cameras, turns out to have been dead for a month. Soon zombii (the book helpfully points out the double i is the correct spelling) begin popping up in the city and all signs point to a cult of animal sacrificing nutbags that have held residence in a North Manhattan warren of buildings known as The Ville.
Along for the ride are other series regulars Nora Kelly, Smithback's wife, and Laura Hayward, NYPD Captain and on again/off again girlfriend to D'Agosta. Through the course of this adventure all the regulars are in serious trouble and after the initial murder of Smithback you are really kept guessing who is going to survive long enough to figure out just what the hell is going on.
Cemetery Dance is a much more intimate story then the last several Preston/Child novels. Although limited in scope, the murder of their friend clouds everything these characters do throughout the book. They make mistakes, they act rashly, and even the brilliant and seemingly unflappable Pendergast is thrown by the conflicting clues in the case. Preston/Child don't write mysteries, but this one was set up in such a way that you could deduce what was going on (faster than the characters to be honest) but not why it was going on. Rather then making the book tedious it heightened the suspense as you realize just how much danger the characters are in.
After the good but exhausting Diogenes Trilogy (Brimstone, Dance of Death, Book of the Dead) and the fun but nutty Wheel of Darkness, it was great to see a self-contained case that still brought all the thrills that fans of Preston/Child expect.
NOTE:: For new readers to Preston/Child I recommend starting where they did, The Relic. An incredibly good monster-thriller that was made into one of the worst movies of all time. Nora Kelly and Bill Smithback were first introduced in my personal favorite Preston/Child book, Thunderhead, about an archeological expedition searching for the lost city of gold.
