Cemetery Dance (Pendergast) (Agent Pendergast, #9)

by Douglas J Preston and Lincoln Child

Pendergast - the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent - returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult. William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbour - a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private - and decidedly unorthodox - quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived...

• ISBN10: 0446580295
• ISBN13: 9780446580298
• Publish Date: 21 May 2009 (first published 31 August 2008)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 February 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Time Warner Trade Publishing
• Imprint: Warner Books Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 435
• Language: English

Reviews

[Eve1972]

I loved this book, it is actually the first book I have read by these authors and I am for sure heading back to read more by them. Great characters, interesting storyline with great twists and turns, just a really fun read! I am not sure if this book is actually part of a series or not, but it worked very well as a "stand alone" novel, there were just a couple mentions of things that I imagine happened in other books, but nothing that if this is the first book you read by these authors it would confuse you. Definitely one to add to your "to read" list!

[empressbrooke]

Although most, if not all, of the other GR reviews for this book contain a certain plot element without including a spoiler warning, I'm a little uncertain about doing so. I understand their likely reasoning - it's revealed in the inner flap of the book and occurs in the first few pages, but the shock I felt when opening up the cover and reading the newspaper clipping printed there, "William Smithback Jr., a prominent New York Time reporter, was killed in a brutal attack last night in his Upper West Side apartment," was so startling that I'd hate to take that away from other readers.

My first response was denial - no way did Preston and Child kill off Smithback. He's one of their original characters, introduced in [b:Relic|67035|Relic (A Pendergast Novel)|Douglas Preston|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170665293s/67035.jpg|23046] along with D'Agosta and Pendergast. No way did they do it and then reveal it in the book's synopsis without some sort of twist. It's a misdirection! At least twice they've given the illusion that someone was dead, only to find out that we'd been tricked. I was quite confident Smithback would be just fine.

By the time I got to the autopsy scene, where his organs were displayed around his opened corpse, I realized that no, our dear journalist has really left us.

#$@!

One reason I love the Preston/Child books so much is that they've crafted unique characters that I end up really attached to. This is the opposite of so many other thrillers (including, puzzlingly, their solo books). In the end, the reason for Smithback's death was so mundane that it was disappointing. We lost him so some rich dude can get richer? The rich dude's full plan, when finally revealed, seems too crazily far-fetched - too many things had to happen just right for it to have worked out. Being a fictional story, obviously everything DID happen right, but it required quite a bit of suspension of disbelief (go ahead and laugh - after everything that's happened in the Preston/Child books, THIS is what trips me up? I know, I know.)

I'm just lukewarm on this one, which is sad since, to me, new Preston/Child releases are akin to new Harry Potters. There are threads dropped within that are reasonably expected to lead to new ones (Nora's new expedition and the mysterious envelope Pendergast receives), so hopefully I'll go back to being a drooling fangirl in a year's time.