The Beast Returns
Author: Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Deep under Manhattan there are descending mazes of tunnels. Among them, the homeless live out their lives in the dark, unmolested, removed from society. Until now. Now, there is something in the tunnels, something stalking them. Something new.
Headless bodies are flushing out into the river, brought out by storms. No one cares. But when a young debutant ends up in the backflow, decapitated and partially eaten, New York rises to a fervor.
While D’Agosta tries to work with his hopeless superiors, he begins to get closer to the homeless population. He hears rumors. When the tooth marks on the twisted bodies start to come back eerily familiar, Margo and Dr. Frock, still recovering from the horrors of Mbwun and the slaughter that was the museum opening, are once again called in as experts.
As events degenerate and the authorities turn to a desperate reconnaissance in the tunnels, Agent Pendergast returns. He knows that there is more to this sordid story. As he teams up with Margo and D’Agosta a horrific conspiracy and desperate sacrifice plunge readers once again into the horrors of a faraway jungle and the corruption of an unforgivable cover-up.
Reliquary takes place 18 months after the opening night events where the museum beast feasted on the unsuspecting rich and famous. The characters have gone their own separate ways (mostly.) Margo is terrified, twitchy, ad consumed with the desire to learn self defense. Dr. Frock is concentrating on his own scientific projects to the exclusion of anything else. Smithback is looking to cash out as much as possible. And Kawakit, the scientist with the life saving computer program, is nowhere to be found. When police bring the splintered survivors back together for further investigation, they are pulled into something far more horrifying than they could have imagined. What began in the museum isn’t over yet. In fact, it’s bigger than before, with triple the bite.
Reliquary is a strange follow-up. It’s both more intense and less grounded. The plot is fun, but far-fetched and doesn’t bear close examination. The story often dips into the realm of the screeching, double-crossing super villain with a mad obsession and more scientific know-how than sense, a depiction that does not fit with the portrayal of a main character in Relic. Reliquary gets outlandish (albeit still creepy) pretty quickly, and the only thing that saves it from B-movie antics is the writing of Preston and Childs, particularly the way that they describe the laired world underneath Manhattan. Somehow, it works, magically drawing us back, making us willfully ignore the pitfalls and just enjoy the ride. The rollercoaster is broken, but still fun, and while it threatens to careen away, it never quite does.
The warren of tunnels beneath Manhattan, which are real, plus the ancient waiting room for the uber wealthy that was flooded and left to decay, creates a surreal and complex world that is just as tantalizing as it is horrifying. Combining elements of Indian-Jones style urban exploring with lots of creature-feature action, Pendergast comes through, ever the weapon wielding Southern gentlemen with a penchant for disguise and a Sherlock Holmes like sixth sense. It all comes together, despite the disparate elements and the formulaic bad guys and dumb authorities, to create something that is edge of the seat, breathtaking, and imaginative. I came away still in love with the characters, the writing, the worlds within worlds, even the silly, pseudo-science. I want to know this elegant Pendergast more, follow him on more supernatural adventures, and explore the dripping warrens hidden beneath a thriving city that has forgotten and discarded its most vulnerable. I don’t know how it all worked, and worked so well, but I am still hooked, still ready for more, still caught in a dark world of imagination, action, and clever, last minute saving schemes.
– Frances Carden
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