Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 10/19/2019 + 1195 more book reviews

I recently read Preston & Child's most recent novel, Old Bones, which features Nora Kelly, the archaeologist who debuted in one of my favorite Preston/Child stories, Thunderhead. I really enjoyed Old Bones and found out in it that Kelly's husband, Bill Smithback, had been killed in an earlier novel. I was unaware of this so I decided that I needed to continue with the Pendergast series of which I had not read since the 7th book in the series, Book of the Dead. Well this volume is where Smithback gets killed and it was as usual a very tense and exciting read in the series. It appeared that Smithback was killed by a man who had died 10 days earlier. So how and who killed Smithback? Was the man a zombie that had risen from the dead using voodoo? This all leads to a strange cult of people living at an old church and compound on the northern most part of Manhattan Island. This cult was being written about by Smithback because they were apparently sacrificing animals as part of their strange rituals. Was this a motive for Smithback's killing? The story gets stranger and stranger as Pendergast and D'Agosta try to determine what is really going on. In the mean time Nora gets kidnapped and an animal rights group is hell bent on destroying the cult and putting a stop to the sacrificing of animals.

This was one of the better novels in the Pendergast series. A real page turner that kept me guessing up till the end. I'll be looking forward to continuing on with the rest of the series.

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