Book review: Preston & Child, “Cemetery Dance”
From Sunday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
Book Review: Supernatural events become puzzle for novel’s detectives
Fiction
For the past few years, my sister has been trying to get me to read the supernatural mysteries by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. I never took the time until the intriguing plot summary of “Cemetery Dance (Hachette Book Group, $29.99), the pair’s latest novel, caught my attention.
With its twisty storyline and captivating characters, the enthralling, literate page-turner functions well as a stand-alone novel. But as a Preston & Child newbie I didn’t quite understand the significance of the audacious opening chapter.
The novel opens as New York Times reporter William Smithback Jr. and Museum of Natural History anthropologist Nora Kelly are celebrating their first wedding anniversary in their Upper West Side apartment. A neighbor, Colin Fearing, breaks in and stabs Smithback to death, injures Nora and leaves many eyewitnesses to the horrid crime.
The catch: At the time of the murder, Fearing had been dead and buried for 10 days.
It was clear from the book’s context that Smithback was one of Preston & Child’s central recurring characters, but I didn’t realize the journalist dated back to the co-authors’ first book, “Relic.”
For either diehard fans or first-time readers, however, Smithback’s death makes one aspect about “Cemetery Dance” apparent: This is a thriller in which anything can happen.
The writers make good on that implied promise. Police Lt. Vincent D’Agosta takes the case, though he can barely control the rage he feels about the murder of his friend. He is joined by enigmatic FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast, whose graceful eccentricity made me an instant fan.
As the unlikely pair investigates, they find themselves trying to explain the apparently inexplicable: How did a dead man kill their friend? And when Fearing begins to stalk Nora, the stakes get even higher.
“Cemetery Dance” has made a fan out of me. I’m eager to see what Preston & Child will come up with next – and explore where their previous novels have taken readers.
- BAM
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