Audiobook Review: Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Relic

by Douglas Preston (Compact Disc Preston)

This is an action-packed mystery/horror story. The book begins with a failed archaeological expedition years earlier in the Amazon Basin (everyone died – how more failed can one get?), then moves to current day with several deaths in the lower level of a museum of natural history in New York City. (Trigger Warning: two young boys and dogs are among the victims.)

 

Strange goings-on have been occurring for years in that museum ever since the cargo of artifacts from the Amazon expedition arrived. So the museum hid the cargo behind locked doors – in the basement. But now the body count begins to climb.

 

The police so far are discounting the stories of weirdness in the basement, and officially state that a serial killer or a wild animal is the cause of the most recent museum deaths (though they haven’t actually solved the case yet), so the museum insists on holding the big fundraiser the next evening with ramped up security. The key exhibit for that event includes a figurine of a character that kills in the same fashion as the unknown murderer.

New Orleans FBI agent Pendergast has come to New York City to investigate a possible link between the museum killings and some unsolved murders at the New Orleans docks years earlier. The same docks that the cargo had passed through on its way to New York.

 

You know how this is going to play out.

 

The investigation into the mystery of the expedition, the curses, the secrets, the back-stabbing will satisfy any mystery reader. Then toss in the monster-in-the-basement, and the excitement of all the big-name donors at a fundraiser where everything could go horribly wrong, and people end up fighting for their lives, and you have a good ol’ monster story with all the beloved clichés.

 

This is the first story (1995) in the Pendergast series of which there are currently 21 books. David Colacci read the story and he brought all the characters to life. So maybe don’t listen to this at night or while home alone.

 

( official Relic page on the official Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child web site )

 

Recommended by Charlotte M.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service

 

Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

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