What are you reading? Declaratory December 2018 edition

[Blue]

I'm now reading the latest Agent Pendergast novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, City of Endless Night. There's a series of murders involving decapitation (three in two weeks) in NYC, and FBI agent Pendergast and NYPD investigator D'Agosto are on the case. I'm 150 pages in and loving it.

Sell me on the Pendergast novels. My brother-in-law likes Preston & Child. Ipicked up one book on the cheap at a donated book sale (so probably not the best) and couldn't get into it. But I've heard about them from others as well.

So, what's the draw? Believable and flawed characters, unexpected twists, tight plots, polished writing, progression and growth - what draws to that above other novels of the same genre.

(And if you want to suggest a "read this one first" that's be useful.)

 

[Richards]

Challenge accepted.

FBI Special Agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast is somewhat of a literary cross between Sherlock Holmes and Fox Mulder of the X-Files. He's brilliant, with a photographic memory and a top-notch education; his family comes from old money, so he's very well off and is somewhat of a gourmand. He generally takes those cases which are especially intriguing to him, generally those of an "X-Files" nature with something weird about them, although I believe his specialty is technically criminal profiling (especially when it comes to serial killers). He's a distinctive figure: tall, albino, wearing black suits almost exclusively. He's also a Southern gentleman (from Louisiana), with impeccable manners and quite a bit of charm, but also the ability to manipulate people into doing as he sees fit. (It's cathartic reading him tearing into some arrogant clown in the course of a given novel - nobody does a tear-down like Pendergast!)

The first book in the series is Relic followed immediately by its sequel, Reliquary. Those are the first two appearances by Agent Pendergast but he's not the main character; it isn't until the third book in the series (the Cabinet of Curiosities) where he takes center stage, but he's the main protagonist from that point on. That might be a good point to start if you're generally interested in Pendergast as a character, although the first two novels are good reads as well.

What you can expect from an Agent Pendergast novel: a well-written thriller with engaging personalities, a plot based on the real world with a not-too-far-out-there extrapolation into "unknown but technically possible" areas (so you won't be running into space aliens like you would on "The X-Files," but an occasional genetic mutation is fair game), and a fast-paced, engaging story that definitely makes you want to keep reading. (Case in point: I went to bed at 9:30 PM and read until 11:45 PM; woke up about 2:00 AM, couldn't get back to sleep so ended up reading another couple of hours, and finally finished it off this morning after getting up for the day. I started it Christmas evening, reading 50-75 pages a night for the first three nights.)

Johnathan

 

[Janx]

Just finished the first MurderBot book by Martha Wells. Good, fun story that makes me wish I'd thought to write it.

 

[Jhaelen]

I finished 'The Fifth Season' and have now started with 'The Obelisk Gate', both by N.K.Jemisin. I was pretty excited about the first novel in the 'Broken Earth' trilogy. It's exactly about what I enjoy most in my sci-fi novels: exploring a world that is quite different from our own. But it's even more enjoyable because there are also some striking parallels to our world that make you think about the current state of affairs.

It's also well written, and I actually immediately re-read the first chapter after finishing the novel, since it's a kind of a summary of the whole book, except you don't understand most of it on the first reading. Very cool!