Blue Labyrinth

September 8, 2014
The uneven 14th Aloysius Pendergast thriller (after 2013’s White Fire) from bestsellers Preston and Child gets off to a dramatic start. The eccentric FBI agent is enjoying a quiet evening reading poetry at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, when his ward, Constance Greene, answers a knock at the door, only to discover the bound corpse of one of his twin sons, Alban, who was revealed to be a serial killer in a prior series entry. Pendergast’s search for Alban’s murderer takes him to California’s isolated, eerie Salton Sea, which is skillfully evoked by the authors. Meanwhile, Pendergast’s longtime friend and inside man on the NYPD, Vincent D’Agosta, investigates the bludgeoning death of a technician at the New York Museum of Natural History. Less creepy and less suspenseful than the best entries in the Pendergast series, this installment also suffers from unimaginative explanations for the two crimes. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME.

October 15, 2014
Preston and Child (White Fire, 2013, etc.) return with another adventure for modern crime fiction's most esoteric detective, FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast. Badged by the FBI but given free rein, wealthy as a wizard Wall Street trader, intelligent enough to make Mensa members feel inferior, master of exotic Chongg Ran meditation, Pendergast, "skin as pale as marble, eyes like silver conchas," shoulders his custom 1911 Les Baer Thunder Ranch Special .45 and sets out to find the killer who deposited his estranged son, Alban, dead on his Manhattan mansion's doorstep. Alban is autopsied, and an exotic turquoise is found in his stomach. At the American Museum of Natural History, Pendergast consults an expert gemologist-worth reading if buying turquoise-and heads for California's Salton Sea in search of the Golden Spider Mine, all while giving only passing notice to a museum murder under investigation by his friend Lt. Vincent D'Agosta. So begins Pendergast's deconstruction of a deadly conspiracy originating with patent medicine and ending with bizarre battles-triflic acid, poison darts and Sumatran buckthorn as weapons-at the museum and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A Pendergast ancestor, Hezekiah, built the family's fortune on an elixir that ultimately left users with ALS- or Huntingon's Disease-like symptoms. Now the villain is spurred by epigenetic changes wrought on users' descendants by "Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative." Pendergast visits exotic climes for clues, and the authors offer sparkling descriptions-the Salton Fontainebleau is a "fantastical cross between a Chinese temple and an Asbury Park amusement parlor." Constance Greene and other familiar characters appear, and Pendergast learns a startling truth about Alban, whose warped psyche had once wrought havoc. Great character-driven crime fiction-readers new to the series won't be entirely lost, and Pendergast patrons will be thoroughly satisfied.

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June 1, 2014

Aloysius Pendergast may have often wished his worst enemy dead, but it's big trouble when the man's corpse appears on Pendergast's doorstep, a bit of turquoise in his stomach the only clue to his death. Soon Pendergast is tracking a killer bent on righting a very old wrong. White Fire, the last Pendergast novel, has shipped 140,000 copies to date; this book ups the ante with a 200,000-copy first printing, and the new Preston & Child app should help things along.

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