Recollecting and Reliving The First Pendergast novel by Preston and Child - RELIC - A Quarter Century later

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5 *'s for the book

RELIC - Pendergast 1 by Preston and Child

From the Back cover

From bestselling authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child comes Relic, the thriller that introduces FBI Special Agent Pendergast.

Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum's dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human...

But the museum's directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.

Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who--or what--is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?

 

Relic - Recollecting and Reliving

Over a quarter century ago, in 1995 two like minded gentlemen who would become famous as Preston & Child (https://www.prestonchild.com/authors/ ), released their first book The Relic, a collaboration which first introduced us to the character of Agent Pendergast and a creature/monster that rivals any in book-dom. 

The book was preceded by a full decade of meet-ups between the future authors and includes Preston's first non-fiction book. Child who was then an editor was fascinated by the American Museum of Natural History and had planned a book on its history. Douglas Preston was an employee at the museum who wrote articles which impressed Child and the rest is history. (Read more at - https://www.prestonchild.com/faq/questions/The-Preston-Child-FAQ-Release-2-0-Updated-December-2013;art60,94)

On the topic of fiction writing Preston came up with an idea of a murder mystery in the museum which gradually evolved into the domain of horror fiction/techno thriller and we  also find the duo's abject fascination for the Museum which forms the basis of their debut novel. 

Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast or AXL Pendergast is the controversial, mysterious and seemingly secretive FBI investigator in Relic and its sequel Reliquary. His role in Relic is mostly as a additional character. In the subsequent books of the long running series, he is the central character and star.

The descriptions about Pendergast's character and his quirks need an entire separate discourse and that's for another day.

Coming to the book.

Relic is in many ways one of the finest thrillers you will ever read..... 

And there are a good many of them thrillers out  there and every year a good many authors across the globe keep adding to the heap.

The subterranean catacombs of New York's underground and other places have featured prominently in many of the Preston-Child books and has been used to good effect here and to a much greater level in the sequel Reliquary.

Here we have the Museum of Natural History which is the originator of the eerie effects in this book.

We also have a creature in the book which is an original chimera created by the authors and which has a compulsive food cycle and is losing access to the only source of its food, now forced to settle for alternates.

Like thinking meat pie and biting into a soya version or vice versa....

The book starts in the Amazon jungle with the sad tale of an Amazonian tribe which is wiped out by development. 

***This is unfortunately a sad ode to the real time destruction of the Amazon rainforests that have been taking place over the last several decades in the name of development, either mines, lumber or expanding the urban way of life. That we are probably losing Earth's lungs seem to be of little consequence to the world wide populace led by First World people who have had over several generations railroaded the planet of its resources in the name of industrialization (Industrial Revolution started around 1760 from Western Europe and North America led primarily by Great Britain) and development, but who now parrot Climate change by demanding and expecting aspiring Third World people to toe the line by sacrificing their economic developments for a mess created by the First World. ***

Strange dichotomy but as Pendergast in the book series says in his mellifluous Southern voice, "Pray, we digress."

While exploring this particular patch of Amazon which had housed the Kothoga tribe, the expedition led by Dr. Julian Whittlesey, who hopes to prove that they are still dwelling in the area and also to discover their God Mbwun, translated as, 'He who walks on all four".

Here we also see a Avatar (the movie - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499549/) like story where the govt. destroys the area (tepui or tabletop) to protect their interests in a natural resource.

Julian had sought and then rediscovered the Kothoga tribe and had also discovered a unique plant with some strange and powerful properties indigenous to the area, unfortunately his team had been infiltrated from the start and he unknowingly becomes the cause of the tribes annihilation and also the annihilation of that rare plant the sole natural food source of the Mbwun. The only other source being the human brain.

The expedition team explores the area and Creature attacks follow and suddenly we have the entire archeological expedition disappear. Dr. Julian who has discovered a statue relic of the god Mbwun, which is shaped like a cross between a primate and a lizard like animal arranges with his trusted aide to send these relics and samples of the plant back to the museum for further study. Julian himself disappears after this and somehow the relic(s) are transported to the museum.

 

This relic reaches the museum after a year but not before a dock worker is mutilated while with the crates of the expedition. 

A sign of things to come.

Things thaw down for seven years and then the death of two kids in the museum opens a can of worms in the form of a police investigation. 

The museum is locked down but Pandemonium ensues when the museum conceives a special gala with the relic as a central point. The gala planned with wealthy benefactors is a PR coup that the museum can ill afford to disrupt. 

They even create a rumor about a legendary Museum Beast which roamed the underground under the museum. Claw marks on a body strengthen this rumor. 

With more deaths FBI Special investigator Pendergast makes an appearance. 

Pendergast helps the investigating team make the leap about the origins of the Museum monster and the connection with Julian's samples and the leaves that were sent by him and concludes that the monster also made the trip back to the museum.

The investigating team also has Margo Green the student who helps Pendergast kill the creature.

This book surpasses many of its contemporaries in terms of a solid plausible storyline that meshes well with the techno-scientific jargons and terms that Preston and Child provide and also brings to the fore the evils associated with mining and the way virgin areas across the globe are being exploited by ruthless corporations, corrupt governments and indifferent leaders. Relic seamlessly uses the background of the tribal story as an allegory for real life.

The use of folklore, science and horror in a spectacular mix that radiates in its flow. 

The book had been immediately optioned for a movie which released in 1997 with the same name. But unfortunately for the book and series lover with several changes from the book including doing away with Pendergast as a character.

Despite dark overtones and lots of shot in the dark scenes, the movie is still a well made one.

The book introduces us to one of the finest protagonists in a book, Agent Pendergast, Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast in full. Articulate, intelligent and with a voluminous encyclopedic memory who personifies cool and the proverbial stiff upper lip (it helps that he actually belongs to the Southern upper crust), unflappable, uber educated and with a shrouded history.

His antecedents are shrouded in as much of a mystery as the rest of Preston-Child books and we keep getting small peeks into the various colorful stories and histories.

This is at times a cerebral story but is a book that I highly recommend.

I read it nearly a dozen years back and although the story seems dated because of the profusion of all kinds of creature features in books today, and the profusion of techno-thrillers, still it gives a peek with what has made the author duo

Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child one of the finest pair of thriller writers with epic blockbusters every year.

I had picked up the copy over the weekend to see how it reads after 27 years and felt it has aged well like good wine. I loved reliving the tale. Hope you do too. 

Cheers to a magnificent read. All of 5 *

Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3993546197

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