Mystery and Suspense With a Museum Flavor
Categories: Movies & Books , Mystery & Suspense , Staff Picks , Fiction
It is finally here! I always wait in great anticipation for the new Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child books. This one, The Book of the Dead (2006) landed on my desk last week. It takes all my will power not to devour it in one sitting.
Set in the slightly fictionalized Natural History Museum in New York City, it is another intricate suspense thriller from Preston and Child. This one involves an ancient cursed Egyptian tomb that was installed in the museum basement in 1872, yet has been bricked up, sealed for seventy years for mysterious reasons, and all but forgotten by the museum. Strange things start to happen when the tomb is re-opened.
The cast of characters is varied, flawed, and believable. The grand old museum building, with its attics, sub-basements, laboratories, and storerooms is the real star of the story. Its shadowy presence sets a tense mood, the perfect setting for the creepy and suspenseful story.
The Relic (1995) was the first in what is referred to as the "Pendergast Novels" by this wonderful writing team. This was the basis for a very cheesy movie in 1997; as I have implored you before, please don't judge the book by its movie!
I encourage you to read the series, which continues with Reliquary (1997), then Cabinet of Curiosities (2002), Still Life with Crows (2003), Brimstone (2004) which is first in the "Diogenes trilogy", Dance of Death (2005), and now Book of the Dead (2006).
FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast is a very unusual protagonist, and fits very well into the array of colorful characters that includes NYPD Detective Vincent D'Agosta; journalist William Smithback; museum scientists Margo Green, Nora Kelly and others; the mysterious Constance; and of course, the evil villain Diogenes Pendergast.
Preston and Child have collaborated on some other mystery/suspense/adventure books, that while exciting and fun to read do not (in my humble estimation) stack up to the Pendergast novels. They have also produced a number of novels as separate authors.
Some other mystery and suspense books with a museum-type connection are the following:
- Haunted Ground (2003) and Lake of Sorrows (2004) by Erin Hart: forensic research, trying to solve the mysteries of bodies found in the Irish bog
- Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown; codes and mad chases from the Louvre in Paris to London and the countryside. Basis for the 2006 movie.
- Bone Vault (2003) by Linda Fairstein; murder mystery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Death Artist (2002), Color Blind(2004), and The Killing Art (2005) by Jonathan Santlofer; female retired cop-turned-socialite investigates serial murder in the world of Manhattan art museums and artists
- The Murder Room, by P.D.James (2003), a sophisticated, rather complicated story set in an English country house museum with the murder investigation led by none other that Adam Dalgliesh, detective extraordinaire.
