Blue Labyrinth
 Hardcover 1st edition | |
| Author |
Douglas Preston Lincoln Child |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Pendergast |
| Genre | Thriller |
| Publisher | Grand Central Publishing |
Publication date | November 11, 2014 |
| Media type | Print, e-book, audiobook |
| Pages | 416 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-1455525898 |
| Preceded by | White Fire |
| Followed by | — |
Blue Labyrinth is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The book was released on November 11, 2014, by Grand Central Publishing.[1][2] This is the fourteenth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series.[3]
Plot
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.
—Review by Kirkus[4]
Reception
What is a reader to make of such a novel? Certainly that it’s fast-moving, sophisticated and bursting with surprises, but also that it’s shamelessly, gloriously over the top. If you’re willing to surrender to Preston and Child’s fiendish imaginations, you might devour the Pendergast books the way kids do Halloween candy.If, however, you’re cursed with a literal mind — if you crave some semblance of reality in fiction — you might cry, “Out, out, damned plot!” and fling “Blue Labyrinth” aside in horror. But clearly a lot of people delight in the Pendergast extravaganzas, or there wouldn’t be so many of them.
—Review by The Washington Post[5]
References
- ↑ "Blue Labyrinth (Pendergast series Book 14) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child". amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-01-05.
- ↑ "Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child (Hardcover Book, 2014)". hachettebookgroup.com. Retrieved 2014-09-24.
- ↑ "Blue Labyrinth (Pendergast #14) by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child". goodreads.com. Retrieved 2014-09-28.
- ↑ "BLUE LABYRINTH by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child". kirkusreviews.com. Retrieved 2015-01-04.
- ↑ Anderson, Patrick (November 16, 2014). "Book review: ‘Blue Labyrinth,’ by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child". washingtonpost.com. Retrieved 2015-01-07.
External links
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