Two Graves (Agent Pendergast, #12)

by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world.

But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels - perpetrated by a boy who seems to have an almost psychic ability to elude capture - NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help. Reluctant at first, Pendergast soon discovers that the killings are a message from his wife's kidnappers. But why a message? And what does it mean?

When the kidnappers strike again at those closest to Pendergast, the FBI agent, filled anew with vengeful fury, sets out to track down and destroy those responsible. His journey takes him deep into the trackless forests of South America, where he ultimately finds himself face to face with an old evil that - rather than having been eradicated - is stirring anew... and with potentially world-altering consequences.

• ISBN10: 0446554995
• ISBN13: 9780446554992
• Publish Date: 11 December 2012 (first published 20 November 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Grand Central Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 480
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

I'm rating this book 4 stars out of relief that Preston & Child were finally interesting again, but it's not lacking flaws. I will start with the positive and say that while their last couple books bored me and lacked all sense of urgency, I sped through this one very quickly and actually felt quite pained to have to put it down to sleep and cook and go to work. I was genuinely curious to know where it was going.

On the downside, it's just a bit disjointed. There are a whole bunch of different plots thrown together - the hotel serial killer is the most interesting, although this dovetails into the strange modern day Nazi secret shadowy group first mentioned in the last Pendergast book, and then there's also a side story about long-time series guest star Corrie and her father and a used car lot scam, and another side story about Constance's psychiatrist Dr. Felder going on a mission to find a lock of her hair. While they these side stories were mildly interesting, I didn't care much about Dr. Felder and wished the time had been spent with Constance. Her reveal of what happened with her baby that she's been accused of murdering is rather abrupt and random, and more time spent from her point of view could have fixed that.

I think, ultimately, I would have preferred a story just about the hotel serial killer. Since Pendergast is the authors' big star, I think they've felt obligated to make all of the mysteries personally relate to him. I wouldn't mind if they scaled back on this a bit and returned to some of their earlier types of stories. It seems that this wraps up the "Helen trilogy" and I have to admit I'm not sure why it required three books to tell this story.