Rating:

“Truth is the safest lie.”

Authors: Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

Agent Pendergast is supposedly on vacation, recovering from his discovery of a vicious killer whose diabolical history intertwines with his only family past and heritage. But Pendergast does nothing for the sake of ease, and this strange vacation to a sweltering corn field in Kansas is no lark, but another journey into darkness. This time, he is following a different killer. It could be a person. It could be a monster. Whoever or whatever it is, stalks the residents and leaves increasingly distressing tableaus of carnage amongst the corn.

This is the first time I’ve seen city slicker Pendergast taken from New York and transplanted, seemingly miraculously, into a strangely deep-south version of Kansas. There is no hint of how Pendergast became aware of this killer or why. There is also very little about the mansion he inherited, outside of a few phone calls. This is a segue, a standalone adventure, which is strange, since the series was moving away from venues into establishing its wily character with a connected string of half man-made, half-supernatural horrors.

The jaunt is both enjoyable and flawed. The setting is creepy, as corn fields waving in the sultry night air inevitably are. This Kansas, however, has more of a Tennessee feel, with humid summers and drawling, lackadaisical law enforcement. Kansas is hot, for sure, but it is a dry heat, and the natives have more of a midwestern than a southern feel. The setting immediately feels fake and forced, throwing us out of the story and making us question everything, from the flavor of the take town to the details of the landscape.

Then, we get into the epicenter of the hybrid corn wars. There are several towns, close together, competing over a snooty scientist, who is trying to find the perfect place to grow his stronger, better corn variety.  This sudden onslaught of serial killing could imperil the fake town’s chances of getting the hybrid corn contract and the big bucks that go with it. In true Jaws fashion, the law force is more interested in hushing everything up than in protecting the people. Enter Pendergast, who cares more about stopping a killer than engaging in the corn wars.

Pendergast teams up with a goth teen, loathed by the sheriff; together they venture around the town, and our enigmatic agent learns the local history. Here, we could easily take off a hundred pages. Interspersed among the creative and gruesome killings, there is a lot of (forgive the pun) dead space. A lot of meandering and discussions about hybrid corn and the other town trying to court the snooty scientist to plant his experimental field there instead, where there are fewer serial killers. We have terrifying, memorable moments of unwary people being chased through fields, an echoing “MUUAAAHHHHHHH” that will haunt us in our dreams, and then pages and pages of not very much happening at all. Brevity is the sole of wit, as Pendergast might say, and this show needs to speed up.

Image by Manuel from Pixabay

Eventually, it does, and Still Life With Crows becomes another book entirely. It goes from southern mystery/horror to full out Michael Crichton thriller as bother Pendergast and the sheriff reach a simultaneous conclusion: the killer is in the caves under the town. This results in a perilous, high-casualty chase during a dangerous and cinematic storm. We go from bored to engaged instantly, remembering why this series is just so darn good.

Now, while the story is creative and fun in many ways, it doesn’t bear close inspection. The ending and killer reveal just sort of happen, and everything makes very little logical sense. The killer even has a “jump scare” come back scene that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. He is impermeable to bullets too, despite being human.  And his origin story – so not the least bit realistic or earned.

Still, the story is classic Pendergast, with all the ups and downs, scintillating moments, and clever killings, making it fun and worth reading, warts and all. I do hope, however, that Pendergast will go back to the city and follow his true passion and cases that reveal more of his personal backstory and besmirched heredity. Let’s leave the cornfields and southern towns and bayou drawls and all that jazz to the B-movies and let Pendergast follow the sophisticated and sinister, gory mysteries he does best going forward. Still Life With Crows is an outlier in an otherwise quality series.

 

– Frances Carden

Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress

Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews

Frances Carden
Latest posts by Frances Carden (see all)