Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't wait to get back to it!
Review: Beginning writers can learn a lot from STILL LIFE WITH CROWS. Preston and Child take a farfetched plot and make it believable by working overtime on research. They show us an imaginary town in Kansas beset by a "serial killer," but they also spend extra time teaching us about tornadoes, turkey processing and spelunking.
I was also impressed by how seamlessly Preston and Child work this information into the plot line and it's hard to tell where Preston leaves off and Child begins, their styles are so compatible.
Add two great characters to the mix and you have a page turner on your hands. FBI agent Pendergast shows up in town to investigate the murder of a relic hunter whose body is found in a small clearing in a corn field surrounded by crows skewered on ancient Indian arrows. Blond-haired Pendergast wears expensive black suits and imported shoes; his deductive abilities will remind you of Sherlock Holmes, but his idea of a Watson is young Corrie Swanson, an eighteen-year-old misfit with purple hair and metal dangling from every orifice. He hires her and her ancient soot-belching Gremlin to drive him wherever he needs to go.
There were a couple of things about the book that didn't measure up. One was the serial killer with the super human strength. Preston and Child's explanation doesn't adequately explain where it came from. Also, the relationship between Corrie and Pendergast is a bit iffy. We never do find out what Penergast's motivation is. That said, I have to give this one five points for entertainment value, if nothing else. I couldn't wait to get back to it.
Rating: 
Summary: From All the Hiding Places
Review: This is the fourth book by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child in which FBI Special Agent Prendergast has played a special role. In the last book (The Cabinet of Curiosities) he has been promoted to a main character. Prendergast is an almost over-cultured southern gentleman who is almost a classic model of the aesthete. He has an irritating superciliousness and an unorthodox approach that inevitably puts him at odds with the powers that be.In Still Life With Crows, an intriguing series of killings draws Prendergast to the little town of Medicine Creek, Kansas. The killings are bizarre - a dead woman arranged in a ring of valuable arrows, a dog killed just for its tail, disemboweled and stuffed corpses. Equally eerie are the towns old legends of the Curse of the Forty-fives - a story of a ghostly band of Indians that arose from nowhere and killed the white men who were hunting them. Prendergast inserts himself in the investigation, drafting Corrie Swanson, the town's sole Goth and trouble-maker as his chauffer and assistant. An unlikely relationship that grows slowly as Corrie's suspicions relax, almost stealing center stage from the murders. As they have done repeatedly, Preston and Child demonstrate excellent story-telling skills building both characters and tension, filling a plot with details, creating a horror story out of cornrows and stalactites. They do have one habitual flaw, though. By halfway through the book the reader can make an intelligent guess about the nature of the murderer. Identity and motive are still a mystery, but the writers simply drop too many hints. They try to make up for this by using the last 100 pages for a frantic, high tension pursuit, but some damage cannot be undone. Of course, this flaw is forgivable because Preston and Child are high quality writers. If you like both mystery and suspense, then you may not even notice the problem. I lean more towards the puzzle solving aspects, and so feel the solution shouldn't have been as obvious as it was. Regardless of this, I enjoyed the book, as will all but the true sticklers for deductive fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: This book isnt Relic, but it is great, I love the Pendergast character and think anytime they use him is good. I like murder mysteries and this was a very good one. Very graphic and suspenseful. I recommend this to any fans of murder mysteries, thrillers, etc. I thought it was a very good book and you should check it out. I dont know how you can rate this below a 4. Go get this from your local library, I couldnt put the book down, I would skip doing homework to read this book (that doesnt happen often). The characters have great depth, you see into their worlds and it is great.
Rating:
Summary: Fast paced and spooky
Review: Preston and Child deliver another great story in "Still Life with Crows." I won't recap the story line, since so many reviews before mine, and undoubtedly after mine, have done so. Instead I will concentrate on why I have rated this book with 5 stars. While I raced through the pages, I could visualize a movie playing out in my head. There are so many scenes that are film-worthy, with plenty of spooky settings, chases, and jump-out-at-you moments. There is a bountiful cast of colorful characters and many vignettes of small town life. There are scenes inside a turkey slaughterhouse and in a spectacular series of caves. There are scenes of gruesome violence as well. Rarely have I found a book where both the killer and the investigator are equally creepy and quirky, but that is indeed the case here. FBI agent Pendergast, who has made an appearance in other Preston/Child books, is a mysterious man of many talents. His knowledge of the arcane puts Sherlock Holmes to shame. His preference for the finer things of life recalls the better side of Hannibal Lecter. He selects as his local sidekick a Goth teenager with purple hair who is as much a loner as he is, and together they make an unusual team. If you are a Pendergast fan, you will certainly get your money's worth in this book. As for the killer... well, I won't spoil the story, but be assured that this is someone who is quite different from the average psychopath. Although the whodunnit is uncovered well before the end of the book, it is not until the last two pages that the whydunnit is revealed. And that revelation is a stunning one, although its premise might be a bit far-fetched. This is a wholly entertaining, suspenseful, and captivating book, and once the story is at full speed you will have trouble putting it down.
Rating:
Summary: And the Pendergast "plot" thickens!
Review: I waited such a long time for this book but I admit the hardcover was more than I wanted to pay. Then I found an excellent used copy and I'm so glad I did. I've read all the other books in the series and I love Pendergast being the main character. And the "Ghost Warriors" aspect was fascinating! But there's still the big Pendergast mystery. Who is he really? I hope there will be another sequel out on this one!
Rating: 
Summary: A relaxed effort not a winner
Review: I guess the authors took a break on this one--it is certainly not up to their best. The plot is given away way too soon and is rather boring. They really have to stretch to tie up the loose ends by the last few pages, and one wonders if earlier they intended to write something else but got tired and just decided to use unconvincing explanations for why certain objects were used in the killings. This gets 2 stars just for the appearance of Special Agent Pendergast--though he too is on vacation in this one. Perhaps the writers should spend longer than a year coming up with new ideas. Given the authors' hot and cold reputation, one may want to wait for reviews before purchasing their next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Really fell apart at the end
Review: I have read other books by the authors and enjoyed them, but this is the first Special Agent Pendergast book I have read. He is a great character and I was completely enthralled with him and the book in general, up until the end (last 70-80 pages or so). There were a few hokey elements earlier, but these were easily overlooked because everything else was so good. But the end (which I will not reveal)was just stupid, ridiculous, unworthy of these authors...really a huge disappointment. How could they have come up with something like this? I will read Cabinet of Curiosities next, though, since Pendergast is such a fascinating character, and that book is considered their best (or close to it) by their fans. However, with the bad taste of the ending of this book left in my mouth, I won't be quite so eager for their future offerings. I wouldn't want to invest so much emotional energy in a book and be so let down at the end again.
Rating:
Summary: The apotheosis of the Hardy Boys?
Review: I confess I almost never read this type of book--my bookstore was giving away pre-publication promotional books with other purchases and I happened to pick this up for free. So if you're a fan of this particular genre--whatever the genre is, precisely (I'm not sure--gothic thriller detective fantasy?)--you might want to skip my comments. On the good side, it's literally a "page turner"--I read about the last 300 pages in one long sitting, through one sleepless night. On the other hand, it strikes me as an exceedingly strange genre. It's like the apotheosis of the Hardy Boys, complete with caves and Indian relics and a crashing storm accompanying the denoument (I kept half expecting to come upon Fenton Hardy tied to a cot). The writers are extremely skilled at writing narrative, but there's virtually no interior action whatsoever, and the narrative is so absurdly implausible that, to me at least, it works against the moods of foreboding and and peril that the authors are trying to elicit. This may be de rigeur for the genre, I don't know. In its own way, taken on its own terms, the book is relatively seamless until the ending, where I think the authors stumble badly, finally tipping over into the unintentionally absurd. (I won't be more specific to avoid exposing the details to those who haven't read it yet.) Actually, I suppose we had reached that point at about the time the Rolls-Royce appears, but that's being too lit-critical. Intellectually I don't resonate very much to the "monster" archetype. I think it goes back to millions of years of hominids living amidst noctural predators who really posed a danger--it's certainly a strong lizard-brain instinct. But we're past that. The endless parade of monsters in all manner of pop entertainment has gotten more than stultifying. As far as this one is concerned, hadn't we moved past one-dimensional antagonists at least by the time of _Phantom of the Opera_ or _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_? Never mind John Gardner's _Grendel_. I would have been grateful for just a little shading. The book hits about a dozen notes of stock plotting--classic Sherlock Holmes, the rich-poor/city-country contrast, the disaffected rebellious teenager story, the small-town sheriff angle, classic western, a sort of new-agey transcendentalism, standard horror fare, the monster story, the overwrought Hollywood ending, etc., with liberal doses of the pathetic fallacy slathered over everything. My verdict, probably atypical, is that I both enjoyed reading this book, and was also left profoundly unsatisfied when I had finished with it. Clever as it is, richly well-written as it is, it just doesn't offer anything remotely like the payoff I need from literature. It's like a very fancy meal that leaves you hungry. My reaction, also probably atypical, is that I'm glad I experienced the "gothic thriller" genre, but I also won't be back anytime soon.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting. Enjoyable read.
Review: While not necessarily their best work with Special Agent Pendergast, this one is a good read. As to be expected the writing is sharp, detailed, and really puts you in the action. There are some instances though where one has to say that Preston and Child are reaching just a bit, a little too much technique shows. That being said, the novel is a really good one. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Rating:
Summary: THUNK! The ball has officially been dropped!
Review: Having read and thoroughly enjoyed relic, reliquary, ice limit, mount dragon, thunderhead, riptide and cabinet of curiosities, this book came as a real disappointment. Special Agent Pendergast is one of my favorite fiction characters of all time, but like salt on your food, needs to be used sparingly. This novels serves us a pile of salt on a plate and says "Bon apetit!" His mysterious, part-sherlock holmes, part-superhero antics are a great subplot for stirring up your interest, but when used to excess dulls the imagination. This book unfairly thrusts our beloved Pendergast into the spotlight, and he withers beneath it. The preston/child formula for suspense is applied to a tiny rural town, and suffers because of it. The laughably stereotyped characters bore us briefly before being butchered. The fairly contrived plot comes close to being psychologically interesting, but fails due to lack of development. Is the plot a surprise? Yes, but in a way that is very unsatisfying. Hey, Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston are still phenomenally talented authors who produce terrific entertainment. I must, however, recommend their other novels be read instead of this one.
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