Extinction by Douglas Preston

Published by Forge Books on April 23, 2024

The Jurassic Park franchise suggests that the public has an insatiable appetite for stories centered around the revival of extinct species. Extinction imagines a Colorado park called Erebus that differs from Jurassic Park — as the reader is frequently reminded — because the mammoths and other de-extincted species have been genetically modified to eliminate aggressive tendencies. Yeah, what could go wrong?

Rather than giving the reader a Jurassic Park rip-off, Douglas Preston takes the story in a different direction. A newlywed couple is camping in the park at a discrete distance from their wilderness guide. The guide investigates a noise and discovers a large pool of blood where the couple had been camping. The volume of blood and the short time that elapsed before the bodies disappeared suggests that the bodies were decapitated.

Frankie Cash is a senior detective with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. She’s charged with leading the CSI team to investigate the disappearance and presumed murder of the honeymooning couple. The newlywed husband’s father is a rich old guy who harasses Cash about finding his son (or his son’s killer) while engaging in boneheaded acts that only obstruct her progress.

Cash conducts a murder investigation that overlaps a wilderness adventure. She suspects that the killers are members of a cannibalistic cult, while Erebus wants to blame the crime on environmentalists. That the killers are armed with spears and knives does suggest a cult, perhaps one that is headed by the QAnon Shaman.

The head of security at Erebus seems to be misdirecting Cash, steering her away from an abandoned mine that might be at the heart of the mystery. What is he trying to hide? The answer is farfetched (as is the way of the modern thriller) but nevertheless entertaining.

Cash is in conflict with a boss who wants all the glory if she succeeds and none of the blame if she fails to catch the bad guys. This is a standard storyline, but it at least invites the reader to warm up to Cash, who is otherwise a bit bland. The story’s action scenes are suitable to a thriller.

Preston is a seasoned author (he takes the opportunity to have a character praise the Preston & Childs novel he’s reading) who can probably construct a novel like this one while he’s clipping his toenails. Extinction isn’t special but it isn’t a waste of the reader’s time. Frankie Cash is not a memorable protagonist and the story didn’t excite me, but the plot moves quickly and the key revelation (what is Erebus trying to hide from the public?) is genuinely surprising, although the surprise is largely dictated by its implausibility.

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