A review by weaselweader
Cemetery Dance by Douglas Preston
3.0
More horror than suspense thriller!
William Smithback, investigative reporter from the New York Times, and Nora Kelly, an anthropologist from the New York Museum of Natural History are celebrating their first anniversary in their Manhattan apartment when Smithback is attacked, brutally stabbed and murdered. The open and shut evidence - multiple eyewitness accounts, including several neighbours, the apartment doorman and even Nora Kelly, a survivor of the attack, plus unequivocal video tape evidence from the apartment's security cameras - make the conviction of Colin Fearing, an out of work British actor, a slum dunk done deal as soon as he is captured by Laura Hayward, the homicide investigator in charge of the case. Unfortunately, FBI Special Agent Pendergast and his NYPD sidekick, Lt Vincent D'Agosta, working somewhat outside of the normal investigative procedures, soon discover that all is not quite as it seems. Fearing is dead and buried, having drowned in the Hudson River two weeks earlier.
In order to verify his death, Pendergast and D'Agosta immediately apply for an exhumation order for Fearing's body. Not only do they discover that Fearing's body is missing but it has been replaced by a bizarre fetish that seems to have its origins in Obeah, a shamanistic religion with similarities to Voodoo or Santeria frequently associated with both benign and, sometimes, much darker malign magic. With the NYPD's hopes for a quick conclusion having disappeared with the morning mist on the Hudson River, Pendergast's investigations lead down much darker avenues. The CEO of a software database firm who had sent threatening letters to Smithback as a result of a disturbing article that he wrote for the Times, comes under investigation. D'Agosta is shocked to discover that the CEO is also the owner of a priceless collection of West African art that has its origins in West African Obeah. Further investigations lead Hayward, D'Agosta and Pendergast to a secretive cult hidden in a deeply forested, almost forgotten corner of Manhattan that dates back to the origins of New England.
When one considers the chronology of these two authors and examines their most recent novels, Terminal Freeze and Blasphemy, readers will begin to imagine that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are moving away from the pure suspense thriller genre and are now much closer to the domain of pure horror and the paranormal. As D'Agosta and Pendergast fought their way through a veritable maze of zombies, animal sacrifices and cult high priests in Cemetery Dance, I raised my eyebrows on any number of occasions thinking that the story was definitely going over the top and the melodrama was perhaps beyond what I was willing to bear.
I'll give them credit. They closed the story and tied it all up with explanations that were at least possible in a real world that didn't bring back bodies from the dead to murder the living. Plausibility, on the other hand, is an entirely different question that Preston and Child didn't seem to consider it necessary to even pay lip service to. Four stars for the continuing ability to write in such an exciting way that I still feel compelled to finish the darn novel! Two stars for the lapse into unbearably overwritten melodrama! We'll average it out at three stars and add the proviso that another one like Cemetery Dance will probably put paid to my desire to read continuing titles in the Preston and Child canon. At least I can reminisce about the glory days of Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities.
A lukewarm recommendation (for the time being).
Paul Weiss
William Smithback, investigative reporter from the New York Times, and Nora Kelly, an anthropologist from the New York Museum of Natural History are celebrating their first anniversary in their Manhattan apartment when Smithback is attacked, brutally stabbed and murdered. The open and shut evidence - multiple eyewitness accounts, including several neighbours, the apartment doorman and even Nora Kelly, a survivor of the attack, plus unequivocal video tape evidence from the apartment's security cameras - make the conviction of Colin Fearing, an out of work British actor, a slum dunk done deal as soon as he is captured by Laura Hayward, the homicide investigator in charge of the case. Unfortunately, FBI Special Agent Pendergast and his NYPD sidekick, Lt Vincent D'Agosta, working somewhat outside of the normal investigative procedures, soon discover that all is not quite as it seems. Fearing is dead and buried, having drowned in the Hudson River two weeks earlier.
In order to verify his death, Pendergast and D'Agosta immediately apply for an exhumation order for Fearing's body. Not only do they discover that Fearing's body is missing but it has been replaced by a bizarre fetish that seems to have its origins in Obeah, a shamanistic religion with similarities to Voodoo or Santeria frequently associated with both benign and, sometimes, much darker malign magic. With the NYPD's hopes for a quick conclusion having disappeared with the morning mist on the Hudson River, Pendergast's investigations lead down much darker avenues. The CEO of a software database firm who had sent threatening letters to Smithback as a result of a disturbing article that he wrote for the Times, comes under investigation. D'Agosta is shocked to discover that the CEO is also the owner of a priceless collection of West African art that has its origins in West African Obeah. Further investigations lead Hayward, D'Agosta and Pendergast to a secretive cult hidden in a deeply forested, almost forgotten corner of Manhattan that dates back to the origins of New England.
When one considers the chronology of these two authors and examines their most recent novels, Terminal Freeze and Blasphemy, readers will begin to imagine that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are moving away from the pure suspense thriller genre and are now much closer to the domain of pure horror and the paranormal. As D'Agosta and Pendergast fought their way through a veritable maze of zombies, animal sacrifices and cult high priests in Cemetery Dance, I raised my eyebrows on any number of occasions thinking that the story was definitely going over the top and the melodrama was perhaps beyond what I was willing to bear.
I'll give them credit. They closed the story and tied it all up with explanations that were at least possible in a real world that didn't bring back bodies from the dead to murder the living. Plausibility, on the other hand, is an entirely different question that Preston and Child didn't seem to consider it necessary to even pay lip service to. Four stars for the continuing ability to write in such an exciting way that I still feel compelled to finish the darn novel! Two stars for the lapse into unbearably overwritten melodrama! We'll average it out at three stars and add the proviso that another one like Cemetery Dance will probably put paid to my desire to read continuing titles in the Preston and Child canon. At least I can reminisce about the glory days of Relic and The Cabinet of Curiosities.
A lukewarm recommendation (for the time being).
Paul Weiss