Rating: 
Summary: A Little of the Old, A Little of the New
Review: Douglas and Preston's Cabinet of Curiosities will be a treat for their fans and could even create a few more to add to their number. The set up is fascinating with thirty six dead bodies being unearthed from the 1870s before the dead bodies in the present time also start piling up. The authors keep the pace moving and the tension high, even at points where credibility dips and the twists become a little more predictable. The horror shifts from creeping terror to gross-out squeamishness and then back again with relative ease. It is a fast-paced summer type read that makes one wish it was not the depths of February.
Rating:
Summary: One of the most entertaining books of the year
Review: At a construction site in Lower Manhattan, a grizzly discovery is made. Thirty-six bodies are discovered in an excavated basement passageway. The bodies are those of children dead for over one hundred years. At that location was a Cabinet of Curiosities or a museum of oddities quite reminiscent of a circus freak show or, perhaps today's Ripley's Believe It or Not Museums found in so many city's tourist centers. A mysterious FBI Special Agent named Pendergast enlists the help of Nora Kelly, researcher for the Museum of Natural History to attempt to get to the bottom of the crimes. Nora wonders what relevance this old crime can be to the modern FBI until soon after the press picks up the story, the murders begin again. Pendergast and Nora must try to solve the crimes before they themselves become the killer's next victim.
THE ALIENIST by Caleb Carr is one of my favorite mystery novels. It is rooted in the past-New York City of the 1890s where a serial killer is haunting the streets killing prostitutes. Surprisingly, this book, although set in modern times, is quite reminiscent of THE ALIENIST for several reasons. The ties to the 19th century is crucial to the story; a team is assembled to fight the killer and the killer is quite ingenious. They are also very long books that move at an incredibly fast pace. THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES simply cannot be put down. The Museum of Natural History long a Mecca for families has in it's basement a nightmarish maze that becomes the setting for one of the most terrifying scenes in the book. Chinatown, Riverside Drive and Central Park are all used to a chilling effectiveness as the chase for the killer is on. In spite of a conclusion that might be a bit too outlandish, I definitely recommend this as one of the most entertaining books this year.
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting Details
Review: This novel was very well written and engaging. There are some quirky characters that you instantly want to know more about. The eccentric FBI Agent, the driven reporter, and the museum archivist - who all want answers. The mystery unfolds, literally, from inside a modern day construction/archeological site. Bodies buried for tens of years and the killer still at it? Yes. The very origin of museums themselves; curiosities collected over time. Can you imagine owning all of the items in the Natural History Museum? Or, Ripley's Believe it or not. If you ever wondered if those strunken heads really belonged on a body before getting on those shelves, you should enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Impossible to put down
Review: This writing team never fails to please. In Cabinet of Curiosities, the enigmatic New Orleans FBI agent Pendergast, is up against a formidable, illusive foe who appears to be a couple of hundred years old. The twists, turns and surprises never disappoint; what imaginations these two have. I read Relic, which I would recommend, and Still Life with Crows, which, I feel, is their best effort to date. I anxiously await the release of Brimstone.
Rating:
Summary: Warning: You will not be able to put it down!
Review: My first book by the Preston/Child team, I found _Cabinet of Curiosities_ to be a very captivating and chilling mystery--it was hard to put down at the end of the night! I enjoyed the historical aspect of the story, and loved how the Museum of Natural History was so prominent. Great characters, good research, and fine writing made this one of the most enjoyable mystery books I have ever read!
Rating: 
Summary: FBI Agent Pendergast returns!
Review: As a big fan of the book Relic, I was thrilled to see that FBI agent Pendergast is back for this exciting mystery thriller. Also on hand is reckless newspaperman Bill Smithback and archaeologist Dr. Nora Kelly. This time the city of New York is the scene for a series of horrible murders that are somehow linked to another series that occured over 100 years ago among the poor of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Pendergast appears but unlike before (in Relic) he does not seem to be quite himself... I thought I had it figured out but I was wrong! Next: The Codex.
Rating:
Summary: The Cabinet Of Curiosities
Review: This is the second thriller by Preston & Child I've read--the other being Thunderhead. (I've seen the film version of The Relic, but that doesn't really influence my remarks here.) There's nothing really wrong with The Cabinet Of Curiosities--and there was nothing really askew with Thunderhead, come to that, which was also a three-star exercise--but it simply fails to elevate itself above the use of some rather traditional thriller routines. Preston & Child have polished up a fairly compelling style, by this time. They've done their research, and their continuous fascination with the bowels of dusty museum-type edifices--and the hints of magic and menace that could be lurking in such arcane paper-trails turned paper-traps--are addictive reading as each chapter is digested. I also feel that they handle characters quite well; how could I not love Agent Pendergast, being such a big fan of the Doctor, from Doctor Who? He seems cut from the same cloth, and I can almost imagine William Hartnell stepping into the role of Pendergast, with all his little tricks and strangenesses, were this a film. Nora Kelly, too, is a strong recurring character in these thrillers--and Smithback the wily reporter is a stock character who develops sufficiently beyond the stereotype he springs from. Then there's the mood...the sense of danger lurking; who is our methodical, elusive serial killer who turned autopsy into a form of murder back in the 1880's and seems to have returned to plague modern times, just when a forgotten charnel house full of the bones of thirty-six victims from his ancient murder-spree is unearthed. There is a splendid taste of Steampunk to all of this: the derby-hatted, umbrella-wielding slayer who roams the night, throwing a bag over the head of his next victim, and dragging them off for weird, horribly lethal, spinal surgery for some sinister purpose that stretches back a hundred years and relates to some dreadful bit of biologically-enhanced alchemy, if you will. And how are the killings linked to the prestigious museum where Nora Kelly works, and butts heads with her superiors? Is it just that somewhere in the museum archives--down deep in the dark basement--lie the notes that would explain what the murderer is doing and why he could be alive after a century? Or is the museum connection not nearly so fanciful...Could someone who works there have a reason for apeing the techniques of a long-dead psychopath? Pendergast is a continuously facsinating character, and adds to the Steampunk feel, since he seems to have stepped out of a bygone era of gaslamps and carriages...and then it turns out he can step right back into that era, though before calling him a time-traveler it must be said he uses the cheater's way. Still cool, though. But this fine character, and the others, are not able to distract me from a final assessment of the plot, which is, when all is weighed and balanced, fairly standard. The individual scenes that build suspense--the heroes hunting the killer, while he or she hunts them--and the blossoming into full-fledged action, are all expertly crafted. It is the overall story that is not new, that gives in and ultimately turns rather routine corners. Preston & Child, talented thriller purveyors, are working established formula pretty determinedly in this effort as they did in Thunderhead, and despite all of the fun of reading The Cabinet Of Curiosities, it is nothing original or daring. It is simply another strong thriller. Is that fine with you? If so, okay.
Rating: 
Summary: Preston/Child flub another great concept.
Review: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, the best-selling authors of RELIC, MOUNT DRAGON and other novels, write the literary equivalent of those splashy, overbudgeted movies that crowd the multiplexes every summer. Frequently tied to some nifty high concept, Preston/Child's books somehow never seem to pay off on their promise, delivering thick manuscripts loaded down with soggy, flaccid prose and poorly-defined characters. THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES is, sadly, no exception. Like many of Preston/Child's novels, THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES has a fantastic premise: a serial killer who stalked the streets of New York in the late 19th century might still be alive. This killer, nicknamed The Surgeon, doesn't just dispatch his victims, but performs a gruesome operation on them, removing a section of the lower spine. As the novel opens, a long-buried coal tunnel is discovered during construction of a new apartment building. Inside the tunnel, sealed into its walls, are the remains of more than thirty victims of the old Surgeon, their spines dissected. Not long after this discovery, new victims are taken, and the cycle of mutilation begins again. This is a fascinating basis for a thriller, especially the sort of off-kilter story Preston/Child like to tell. Are the new murders copycats, or the original Surgeon? The question becomes more pressing when the main characters discover that the purpose of the mutilations was to uncover the secret of extending life. So it becomes possible that a serial killer more than one hundred years old is out on the streets. It's hard to figure out how experienced authors could bungle such a great idea, but Preston/Child manage to do so. The problem lies mainly with their inability to draw compelling characters. Preston/Child, in all of their books, fall back on a storytelling mode that could be called Everybody's A Jerk. Frequently used on television and in movies, Everybody's A Jerk narratives depict all characters other than the heroes as completely ineffectual, petty, or just plain stupid. This tendency grows even more annoying when the protagonists are in turn shown to have no recognizable human faults. THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES revolves around Preston/Child's answer to Sherlock Holmes: FBI Special Agent Pendergast. Seen in RELIC and its sequel, RELIQUARY, Pendergast is absolutely flawless; he knows everything there is to know on any subject, is wildly rich, and is utterly unflappable. There's never any doubt that he'll succeed in his plans when he's literally never wrong on any count. Pendergast marches through the novel like a giant among the little people. Even his comrades, Nora Kelly (from THUNDERHEAD) and Bill Smithback (from RELIC, RELIQUARY and THUNDERHEAD), are startlingly inept next to this perfect being. Thus deprived of any real tension, thanks to the hero's infallibility, THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES slogs through hundreds of pages of bitter, unpleasant point-of-view rambling by the extensive cast of numbskulls - Everybody's A Jerk, remember? - until finally lurching into a startlingly wrongheaded conclusion. The climax hinges on elements never revealed to the reader and therefore lacks even a token amount of tension. Preston/Child's novel deflates like an inner tube with a nail in it, and then mercifully stops, but not before setting up an inevitable sequel. What did we do to deserve that?
Rating:
Summary: A Late Night Page Turner
Review: I am a big fan of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and this was one of my favorite books of their collaborations. I devoured this book -- I was on a business trip and read it while I should have been working. The FBI agent Pendergast is fascinating, and I look forward to additional books with him as a character. I highly recommend this book - it is as good as Relic if not better.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating cabinet indeed
Review: Another intelligent and captivating novel by two gifted storytellers. Set in modern day New York City and featuring numerous characters from previous works, this mystery interweaves a series of similar murders that occured a century ago as well as in the present. Like other Preston/Child novels, a key premise and driving factor behind the murders stretches the bounds of plausibility, but we know this before we begin the first page, don't we? Though he does not appear on every page, the book is greatly enhanced by the presence of central charactor Pendergast, the enigmatic, wordly and uber-competent FBI Agent, freelancing once again in New York. His role takes on more depth in this book, though I find him to be such a great character that I hoped to encounter him more often. As usual with their novels, this is a page turner in which you'll learn a bit about a few arcane topics and encounter enough twists and turns to keep you guessing until the end. My sense that the characters could have been better and more deeply developed did not detract significantly from my overall enjoyment. Highly recommended.
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