Sal C. (soquiet) reviewed on 3/2/2008 + 20 more book reviews

In the exciting eighth supernatural thriller from bestsellers Preston and Child (after 2006's The Book of the Dead), FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and his ward, Constance Greene, seek peace of mind at a remote Tibetan monastery, only to fall into yet another perilous, potentially earthshaking assignment. The monastery's abbot asks them to recover a stolen relic, the cryptic Agozyen, which could, in the wrong hands, wipe out humanity. The pair follow the trail to a luxury cruise ship, where a series of brutal murders suggests the relic's evil spirit might already have been invoked. Fans of earlier books focused on a thinly disguised American Museum of Natural History may find less at stake among the new cast of secondary characters, but the fate of Constance, who claims to have aborted the child of Pendergast's villainous younger brother, remains a potent subplot. While not as frightening as others in the series, this entry still shows why the authors stand head and shoulders above their rivals in this subgenre.

FBI Special Agent Pendergast is taking a break from work to take Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed.They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen.As a favor, Pendergast agrees to track and recover the relic.A twisting trail of bloodshed leads Pendergast and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Britannia, the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner---and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.

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