The Cabinet of Curiosities | Douglas J. Preston, Lincoln Child

The Cabinet of Curiosities | Douglas J. Preston, Lincoln Child | Curiouser and Curiouser

books:

The Cabinet of Cur...

	The Cabinet of Curiosities Douglas J. Preston, Lincoln Child Grand Central Publishing, 2002 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 271 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

The most difficult case yet!

The further into the book I read, the deeper the story got! The final revelation was great! If you have enjoyed this series, this is a fantasic climax!

Curiouser and Curiouser

I am hooked on anything these authors write. This book is gripping, intelligent, and impossible to put down. Be sure the lights are all on.

Great!

The first book I read by Preston & Child was "The Book of The Dead" I had gotten it on an impulse seeing it on best selling list and I loved it so much although I had no idea about the background of the characters. Next I read their books in the correct order and the way things came together was very fulfilling. I finally got to learn more about the character of Constance Greene in this novel "Cabinet of Curiosities". Also there was alot of info on Pendergast and his family. I really hope the authors never stop writing this series of Agent Pendergast since I have fallen in love with the character!

The book itself is very entertaining and as with all their novels, I love how the authors never reveal each and every aspect of the story...always leaving something for us to ponder upon. Always leaving some question that still remains unanswered and that may be vaguely answered in one of the forthcoming novels.

for more information click here

A Fast-Paced Thriller from Two Dynamic Writers

Since bursting onto the popular fiction scene in 1995 with the blockbuster thriller The Relic, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have been wowing critics and readers alike with their combination of airtight suspensful prose and carefully executed research. The Cabinet of Curiosities is their seventh bestseller, and it delivers exactly what fans have come to expect.

Nora Kelly is a humble research scientist working at the New York Museum of Natural History (the same setting as The Relic). She wants nothing other than to be permitted to carry out her work in peace, unfettered by the beaurocratic niceties and political backstabbing that plague the administrative offices of that great institution. So when an FBI agent bursts uninvited into her office and asks her to come with him to observe an archeological crime scene, her world is turned upside down. Within hours Nora is sucked into a dangerous game of discovery related to a gruesome series of century-old murders. As Nora and Special Agent Pendergast uncover clue after clue pertaining to the unspeakable violence that haunted New York one hundred years earlier, they get closer and closer to realizing that this old evil is not yet dead. And when new bodies begin turning up, they find themselves pursuing a menace more terrible than they could have imagined. But are they the pursuers, or the prey?

Preston and Child have mastered the art of capturing readers' interest from chapter one and keeping them riveted page after page. There is not a boring page between the two covers. If anything, the action is almost too intense. Halfway through the book it seems that the climax has arrived, and one wonders what can possibly happen for the remaining 200 pages. The answer is that the climax never peaks, and by the end, the reader feels an almost physical exhaustion--which, of course, is precisely what the authors intended.

Certain scenes describing the aftermath of violent crimes are a bit more gory than some might prefer, and one particularly gruesome sequence describes in chilling detail a criminal spinal surgery being performed on a live, unsedated patient. Such techniques go a long way toward portraying the depraved depths of the villain's insanity, but they also lead to a disconcerting reading experience, to say the least.

Preston and Child are a somewhat unlikely pair. Douglas Preston is a teacher who used to work in a museum; Lincoln Child is a book editor with an affinity for collecting and publishing horror story anthologies. Each has published a number of books individually, but it is when they combine forces that the real magic happens.

Reading The Cabinet of Curiosities is very like watching a thrilling and fast-paced movie, only better. The authors manage to capture the excitement of a real-time visual experience while maintaining the ability to get inside characters' heads that makes reading literature so much more rewarding than cinema. The plot is a bit far-fetched, without question, but the characters are just flawed enough to be convincing, and the relationships between them seem real.

This book is no literary masterpiece. It feels more like a graphic novel than an enduring classic. There are some inconsistencies in the story and in the character treatment, such as the description of the villain as a monster who wanted to "cure" the human race by eradicating it and yet somehow "didn't care for the killing" he was forced to do in order to survive. Agent Pendergast has the unique and unexplained ability to go on mental journeys deep in his subconscience by imagining a chess game being played in his mind and then, in an altered state, uncover hidden solutions to puzzles and answer questions he couldn't resolve while fully awake. But the book is refreshing in a way, because the villains are so evil, and the heroes are so opposed to the wickedness they are up against, that there is never any question of who is right and who is wrong. In an age where books that all but deify sin are hailed by many as works of art, a story about real good fighting real evil is a nice change.

The Cabinet of Curiosities is truly an engrossing book. It is named after the private collections of oddities and scientific baubles (along with a good many fakes) that served as quasi-sophisticated entertainment in the period of American history after freak shows and before real museums. The authors did their homework. They describe these "cabinets" and the people associated with them as if they actually had visited one. Their descriptions of the New York Museum of Natural History and the side streets and back alleys of New York City today and New York City of the late 1800s, along with their knowledge of medical procedures and terminology, lend a substancial degree of authenticity to their tale.

Douglas and Child do not write for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. This is an R-rated book. But if you don't mind a little gore and are looking for a fast read with an exciting plot, realistic characters, suspenseful narrative, and a thriller of an ending beneath the streets of New York, this is the book for you. A word of caution before you begin reading: be prepared to be sitting in one place for a long time. And watch those dark corners after you're finished.

for more information click here

I love this book and the series!!

I didn't know this was a series until recently. I read Still Life with Crows first and loved Pendergast. Perhaps that's because I'm Southern, too. I just thought the character development was fantastic. This novel is also very good. I'm backtracking now and then will read the others after Crows.

What I really like about these authors is that reading their books is like savoring a fine wine. I want to read every detail. Skimming just won't do. That says a lot from me since I read voraciously and often speed read.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

products you might be interested in