Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 13, 2024

Each new Pendergast novel is sillier than the last, but I keep reading them. The series was more enjoyable when Aloysius Pendergast was an obnoxious, self-satisfied crime solver. I didn’t care much for Pendergast but I appreciated his acumen as a detective. Even after the appearance of Constance Greene — a woman who stopped aging in the nineteenth century and who might be even more annoying than Pendergast — I enjoyed the novels to the extent that they focused on a recognizable reality — i.e., a world without magic, supernatural apparitions, time travel, or similar silliness.

Silliness has now overtaken the series. I had hoped that her unrequited yearning for Pendergast would cause Constance to flee from his life, but Pendergast’s forbidden yearning for Constance keeps bringing them together. Constance’s latest effort to flee took her to the nineteenth century in a dimension nearly identical to the one that Pendergast inhabits (the one that seems to host the supernatural). The latest stories have replaced magic with time travel, which might be the same thing. So now Pendergast is chasing Constance through time. Really, can’t Pendergast go back to solving crimes in the present and do away with all these quasi-science fiction themes?

Pendergast has an evil brother named Diogenes and a law enforcement friend named Vincent D’Agosta. Both are trapped in the past with Pendergast, who chose not to heed Constance’s plea that he remain in his own century after she returned to the nineteenth — albeit in another dimension — to save her sister Mary from the evil Enoch Leng, another member of the Pendergast family. She might even save her alter-self (or Binky, as the childhood version of Constance is known in this dimension and perhaps in infinite others).

Leng is a doctor whose experiments in life extension resulted in the deaths of dozens of test subjects. In Constance’s timeline, Leng killed Mary by dissecting her while she was still alive. Constance’s plan is to save this version of Mary (and this version of her brother Joe, not to mention Binky) while obtaining vengeance. The story essentially continues the plot that began in The Cabinet of Dr. Leng.

Angel of Vengeance is more an action/adventure story than a crime mystery. I suspect that’s what many series fans want. I suspect those fans will be satisfied with the story. Its 19th century atmosphere echoes Dickens. Pendergast wears various disguises, characters are captured and rescued, fights break out from time to time (occasionally with knives because nineteenth century), buildings explode, people are poisoned, and so forth. The story is fun and moderately exciting but not surprising. Readers who enjoy the series will know what to expect. New readers might want to start with an earlier novel because Angel of Vengeance won’t be easy to digest for those who aren’t familiar with the backstory.

The novel’s ending might leave the door open for another time travel story. Why can’t the brilliant detective go back to solving bizarre crimes instead of hopping around the multiverse? Maybe he will. For now, I can confidently recommend Angel of Vengeance to Pendergast fans, although less enthusiastically than I would recommend books that are more tightly attached to the same part of the multiverse that I inhabit.

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Chrysalis by Lincoln Child

Published by Doubleday on July 12, 2022

Chrysalis is a mega-corporation. Two of its divisions are key to the plot. One makes drugs and medical devices. The other produces smart technology. The company makes a wireless device that consists of an earbud and a small screen that the user wears like glasses on the bridge of the nose, giving users a personal assistant and access to whatever data they need. The next phase of the product’s development will add an immersive virtual reality experience. The VR gadgets have been sent to a thousand lucky customers in the first round of the product rollout.

The novel begins with two researchers in Alaska searching for samples in a Neanderthal mass grave. One researcher murders the other to conceal an important find.

The main story begins several months later. Chrysalis has received an untraceable email that forecasts a death. Two more deaths occur, each victim a director of the company who attended a demonstration of the new VR device. This leads to a final email advising Chrysalis that the customers who received the new VR device will be killed if Chrysalis doesn’t pay a billion dollars. The email warns that recalling the device or notifying customers will trigger the mass killing. Another couple of deaths occur to solidify the threat.

Instead of contacting the FBI like any sensible corporate counsel would advise, Chrysalis’ counsel decides to hire Jeremy Logan, the internationally known ghostbuster. Why anyone thinks his unique talents are suited to corporate espionage is beyond me. Still, it wouldn’t be a Jeremy Logan novel without Jeremy Logan, so the reader needs to let that pass.

The novel’s twin mysteries are (1) how (and if) Chrysalis technology is behind the deaths that the extortionists have caused, and (2) who at Chrysalis is involved in the extortion. The answers are revealed more by luck and coincidence than the efforts of Logan, who spends most of his time following Chrysalis employees and asking questions that glue the plot elements together.

When it comes time to save the day by entering the VR world, Logan does the work instead of someone with IT knowledge because, he says, “I know as much as anybody.” Logan took one brief VR tour so he knows as much as the people who developed the technology? Well, he has as much hubris as anybody, but it makes zero sense that he would take on the task of virtually running around the insides of server architecture. Why isn’t the tech guru who guides Logan doing the work instead of Logan? And why is it left to Logan to save the day by pushing a button at the end of the novel? Only because it's a Jeremey Logan novel. Logan needs to do so something, and after making no serious contribution to the plot, he has to justify his starring role. I can’t imagine any reader buying into this story.

Chrysalis is interesting, but it develops little suspense. Obligatory machine gunning near the story’s end fails to rectify that problem. The conspiracy is too ridiculous to take seriously, a common failing of modern thrillers. Logan’s journey through fiber optic lines is just silly. Characters are devoid of personality, apart from bad guys being bad and everyone but Logan being afraid to take necessary action.

On the bright side, Lincoln Child keeps the story moving and creates a credible corporate atmosphere. Readers who enjoy tech thrillers and don’t care whether the plot is plausible might find something of value in Chrysalis. Readers who are looking for a credible, meatier story should look elsewhere.

RECOMMENED WITH RESERVATIONS

Bloodless by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on August 17, 2021

Bloodless gets off to a promising start by reimagining the D.B. Cooper airplane hijacking. Decades later (roughly in our present), a bloodless body is found in Savannah. Is a vampire roaming the streets of Savannah? It seems more likely to be the work of a particularly gruesome murderer, although sucking all the blood from a body is not an easy task. Aloysius Pendergast and his current partner, Armstrong Coldmoon, are diverted to Savannah to investigate. Pendergast’s ward, the mysterious Constance Greene, goes along for the ride. More bloodless corpses soon appear on the southern landscape, sometimes in a genuinely chilling scene.

Bloodless develops an interesting cast of characters, the kind of people who make satisfying suspects in a murder mystery, including an evil senator who is running for reelection, a documentarian who is filming a series about supernatural events, a scam artist who purports to capture digital images of spirits and demons, and an elderly lady with a collection of antique weapons who lives as a hermit in a hotel’s upper floors. Bloodless also delivers the spooky atmosphere that is almost a necessity in a story set in Savannah.

Some Pendergast novels have flirted with supernatural themes. I haven’t been taken with those stories. I prefer the stories that portray Pendergast as a modern version of Sherlock Holmes, complete with eccentricities that complement his deductive skills. For much of the novel, Bloodless seems like it could go in either direction — a supernatural force might be afoot, perhaps a vampire, or a murderer might be using superstition to mask his killings.

Unfortunately, Preston and Child take the story in a third direction, one that is more science fiction than horror. I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say [stop reading here if you don’t want to risk knowledge of a surprising plot point] that it involves a monster from another dimension. Now, the multiverse is a popular theme in science fiction novels, one that sf writers explore in interesting ways. As they have demonstrated in other novels, Preston and Child are not adept at science fiction. Their explanation for the sudden appearance of blood sucking monster in Savannah is just silly. (Hint: it involves turning a dial too far on a machine that makes no sense.)

The story crashes at the end. I was left wondering why it would be easier for one guy with a handgun to kill a monster in its own universe when it resists death in our universe after being shot with a bazooka, a Tommy gun (yes, seriously), and any number of bullets fired by Glock-wielding cops.

I was also left wondering about all the plot points that were set up in the novel’s first half. It seems like Preston and Child began to write one novel, couldn’t figure out how to end it, and decided to abandon it while writing an ending to a different novel.

I enjoyed the D.B. Cooper angle. I enjoyed the detailed setup. I admired the atmosphere and the careful construction of secondary characters. The authors add a touching scene at the end that’s almost redemptive. If the novel’s strengths hadn’t been counterbalanced by a preposterous conclusion, I would have been a happy reader. At best, I can recommend the first two-thirds of the novel and a brief chapter at the end. You might want to quit after the first two-thirds and make up your own ending if you want to get the most out of Bloodless.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

The Pharaoh Key by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on June 12, 2018

Gideon Crew, for reasons explained in earlier books in this series, has only two months to live. Gideon and his co-workers are fired from their operative-adventurer gigs for reasons that also relate to earlier books. Gideon is cleaning out his desk with co-worker Garza when a computer pings with the solution to a decoding problem it’s been working on for five years. After futzing around to figure out what the solution means, Gideon and Garza head to the Hala’ib Triangle in Egypt, one of the world’s most desolate spots, where the secret of the Phaistos Disk is hidden.

To get to the world’s most desolate spot, Gideon and Garza share camels with a British woman who may or may not be the geologist/anthropologist that she claims to be. The story then lurches from one adventure to another, as our dynamic duo plus one deal with water shortages, sandstorms, captivity, trials by fire, fistfights, knife fights, gun fights, tigers, fights with tigers, and other ordeals (including a tribal custom that involving wedding a teen virgin, which might not be an ordeal but isn’t on Garza’s bucket list).

There is a certain familiarity/predictability to the storyline. Preston and Child mention H. Rider Haggard, perhaps as a hat-tip for Haggard’s pioneering work in the Lost World genre, from which The Pharaoh Key heavily borrows. The novel is also like an Indiana Jones movie without the special effects: life-threatening situation, followed by narrow escape, followed by another life-threatening situation, followed by another narrow escape, and so on. The life-threatening situations give Gideon multiple opportunities to fret that he expected to die soon but not in quite the way he anticipates dying before the next narrow escape comes along, sparing him until a new threat causes him to fret about the way he is about to die.

The plot is like popcorn; each kernel is tasty but eating to the bottom of the bag isn’t filling or nutritious, in part because Preston and Child fail to bring much imagination to the pattern in which they plow the ground. The ending is not nearly as surprising as the authors intended; it seemed to be to the most likely outcome.

I did, however, like the way Preston and Child used the theoretical link between Pharaoh Akhenaten (one of the first adherents of a monotheistic religion) and Moses, who may have been inspired by Akhenaten to champion Israelite monotheism. And while the adventure story is ordinary, it does have entertaining moments. I can’t recommend The Pharaoh Key with enthusiasm, but Preston and Child fans will want to read it just to find out what happens next in the adventurous life of Gideon Crew.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

City of Endless Night by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Published by Grand Central Publishing on January 16, 2018

Two decapitations, although only a day apart, seem unrelated. One victim was a mob lawyer, killed in his home with a bow and arrow. The other, a billionaire’s daughter, was shot through the heart and left in a pile of leaves inside a garage. By the time a third decapitation occurs, it seems a serial killer may be at work.

Pendergast is out of favor with the FBI, and is punished by being assigned to help the NYPD investigate. Normally, Pendergast chooses his own cases, but his breach of protocol in the last novel has not been forgiven. In addition, Pendergast is still suffering the rigors of his last adventure and isn’t his former self. He’s still arrogant and snobbish, but he has little interest in his former passions, including the investigation of murder. He’s also lost a good bit of his bulk and doesn’t seem inclined to regain his strength. But the real problem, the reader presumes, is that Pendergast is feeling the pangs of lost love. Fortunately, it takes only a tea ceremony to restore our intrepid detective.

Are the deaths related? A reporter is certain the victims, all fabulously wealthy and of disreputable character, were killed by a psychopathic vigilante, a theory that has New Yorkers cheering (at least, the ones who aren’t wealthy). But Pendergast is being his usual tight-lipped self. The billionaire whose daughter was killed, however, doesn’t like the way the reporter portrayed his daughter, and intends to do something about it. Something wicked.

The plot touches upon a number of hot-button issues without becoming overtly political, including reporters who may or may not publish fake news, publications that sensationalize news, protests against one-percenters, and the use of social media to manipulate opinion. The story begins as a straightforward serial killer investigation and ends with a prolonged action scene of the “Most Dangerous Game” variety. Some of the plot pushes the boundaries of credibility (particularly a nutcase who wants to build a big bonfire of the vanities in Central Park, a bonfire that the police handle in a strange way), but most of the story is plausible, and that’s more than one can say for a good many modern thrillers.

The plot does include a potentially life-changing event for Pendergast, but it comes in the epilog. City of Endless Night is more an action novel, and less a character-development novel, than some others in the series. Its pace and intrigue, however, are comparable to other Pendergast novels, which makes it a fun read.

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