book review

Brimstone

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

5/13/2006

Art critic Jeremy Groves is discovered burned to death in a locked room of his Southampton home. It appears that he burned from the inside out. There's a burn mark that looks like a hoof print in the room. His death has the faithful - and the unbelievers as well - wondering if the Devil came for Jeremy Groves.

Sgt. Vinnie D'Agosta is now working for the Southampton police department, chafing against it, and wishing he could be back in New York City. He is assigned traffic control as the detectives look over the death site. His circumstances have gone downhill since he left NYPD a few years earlier to write novels. But things are about to change for him again.

When FBI Special Agent Pendergast comes on the scene, D'Agosta becomes the FBI liaison in the bizarre death. Another man dies soon after in New York City exactly the same way. Now Captain Laura Hayward becomes involved with the case. The three of them are once again together in a peculiar case with the supernatural possibilities hovering over their actions. Along the way they meet an Italian count, a rock music mogul, a self-made preacher, a weapons business self-made man, an old fashioned girl who plays the violin, and an Italian priest. Pendergast has a way of getting himself and his colleagues out of tight situations. But this fight with the Devil may be too much for even him.

If you want a fast-paced suspense novel that keeps you thinking as well, you need to pick up Brimstone. It is spooky and devious. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have once again written a tight, riveting novel that keeps the reader involved the whole way through. Special Agent Pendergast pulls rabbits out of his hat to thwart the people trying to kill him and his partners. D'Agosta is down to earth. It is easy to identify with his predicament. Together, they get the job done. There's an unexpected twist at the end that leaves Preston and Child's fans wondering and shaking their heads.

Within the first two chapters I picked up the telephone and called my sister. "Isn't Count Fosco the name of the Italian count in Wilkie Collins' Woman in White?" She agreed. She had recently read the novel and we had both seen the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical over the winter. At the end of the book Preston and Child readily admit that they lifted the Count Fosco character "body and soul" from Collins' book, one of their favorites. They say it was done as a tribute to the man who invented the modern mystery and suspense novel. I say "brava"!

You can find more about this book at .

Notice: Sexual situations

The Series:

Brimstone
Dance of Death
The Book of the Dead

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book review, Brimstone, Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child, Special Agent Pendergast, Vincent D'Agosta, supernatural, murder novel, suspense fiction, New York City

book review