Book Review: Pendergast: The Beginning by Preston & Child
From the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Preston and Child comes the Agent Pendergast origin story—a golden opportunity for longtime fans and new readers to learn about Agent Pendergast’s strange and shocking first case. Keep reading for Jeff’s review.
FBI Special Agent Pendergast made his first appearance over thirty years ago in Preston & Child’s first novel together, Relic. Still, his story before he assisted with the killings in the Museum of Natural History in New York City hasn’t been told until now.
In the summer of 1994, Pendergast is a new agent on probation, working with his senior partner, Dwight Chambers, at the New Orleans Field Office. From the moment he arrives, he does not fit in well with his partner or his superiors. Pendergast makes an arrest in disguise, and the fallout gets him and Chambers suspended. While Chambers is distraught, Pendergast takes advantage of their time off by dragging his partner along to a strange murder of a Louisiana native in Mississippi. The body was found in a storage facility, strangled, with his arm severed from his body. The investigation leads them down a bizarre path involving other bodies with missing arms and a university study involving psychic phenomena. They soon realize they are dealing with a serial killer who has somehow remained in hiding for years. While they grapple with the baffling case, a recent hire for an unorthodox transportation company is kidnapped on the morning of a special delivery. He wakes up in a padded cell, and a captor who takes the time to make sure he eats and drinks enough to maintain his health. The kidnapped victim is known only by the name Proctor, and he’s got a lot to figure out if he’s going to escape.
Fans of Preston & Child will love this dive into Pendergast’s start at the FBI, and the exploration of Proctor’s origins as well. Newcomers will find this is a terrific place to start. Prequels and origin stories often struggle to generate suspense, since the reader already knows the protagonist survives to appear in other stories. Preston & Child somehow avoid those restraints and deliver a compelling thriller with plenty of page-turning excitement and unpredictability. This is another guaranteed bestseller.
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