![]() If Pendergast – who is encouraged by girlfriend Viola to treat Constance like a daughter - is baffled, we’re allowed to be baffled along with him. I admit I went with it, and it probably helps that we don’t get Constance’s point of view. How could someone who led a sheltered life for a century (while not physically aging beyond 21) outsmart an evil genius?Īll 12 ‘Friday the 13th’ films, ranked from worst to best When Pendergast investigates pages in a library atlas and finds threads from Constance’s clothes, thus learning where she is headed, I imagine even P&C were laughing at the absurd level of investigative talent on display.Įven after an epic showdown on the lip of a volcano on a remote Mediterranean island – something that especially called to mind 2005’s “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” upon publication – Constance remains a cipher. Rather, we see Diogenes off-balance for the first time, and also Aloysius following both of them. When Constance pursues Diogenes around the globe for payback, we never see her perspective. It’s a shame on one level, because they could’ve made an interesting couple as two lost souls who don’t fit in the real world – although that might be me falling under Diogenes’ phony sway, too. She is the woman scorned here after Diogenes seduces and beds her, he tries to drive her to suicide, seeing her as a pawn in his game against his brother. P&C aren’t ready to totally lift the veil from Constance, though. As such, it’s a blast in this book to see Menzies through our knowing lens, playing along in board meetings, dodging the probings of Smithback, and poisoning poor hospitalized Margo (who again is a glutton for punishment, but at least she’s still alive). ![]() In “Dance of Death,” we learned in a fun surprise that Diogenes has an alternate identity as New York Museum of Natural History professor Hugo Menzies.īut they only let readers in on the secret, not the characters. With “Book of the Dead,” the authors are forced to bring Diogenes and the even more mysterious Constance Greene - Pendergast’s ward who never leaves the Riverside Drive mansion – to the fore. If Pendergast is scared of something, we know it’s scary as such, P&C are able to put a creepy vibe into something that’s ridiculous on the surface: a 19 th century-vintage carnival show. Here, we finally learn of the incident from their childhoods – remembered by Diogenes, blocked out by Aloysius – that makes Diogenes hate his older brother.Īloysius has to go into his mind palace (introduced in “Still Life with Crows”) to retrieve the buried memory, initially resisting the prodding of Eli Glinn (introduced in “The Ice Limit”) to do so. Brotherly hateĪt “Book of the Dead’s” core, though, is the rivalry between the Pendergast brothers. It’s almost like a series of short stories, taking a reader through Egyptian history to an ingenious prison break to a scientific exploration of the adverse effects of a sound-and-light show on the human brain. By the time you’re done with the 597-page tome, you may have forgotten what happened at the beginning. Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child wrap up the Diogenes Trilogy in epic, sprawling and satisfying fashion in “The Book of the Dead” (2006).
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