Blue Labyrinth by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

 I know I've read several of the Agent Pendergast series by Preston and Child before, including Still Life with Crows and Relic, but for some reason I never put together the idea that they were a series. As expected, this one was twisty and a bit dark, with a truly quirky and unique protagonist.

I think I need to drop back and read a couple books prior to this one to understand what's really going on, because there are a number of cryptic references to earlier events, but the crux of the matter is that one of Pendergast's recently-discovered twin sons, the "evil" twin, who was a serial killer in New York in an earlier story, turns up murdered on the agent's front porch one day, after a long exile in the jungles of Brazil. The agent is never one to leave a good mystery alone, and so he embarks on his own quest to find out who has killed his son, whom he despises, and why the crime was committed.

In parallel, one of Pendergast's old friends, detective d'Agosta, is involved with his own murder mystery, involving the bludgeoning death in an isolated corner of a museum, of one of the technicians who works in the department which handles old skeletons...skeletons in the closet indeed!

This one gets violent, bloody and twisty pretty quickly. I definitely have to drop back and read some of the earlier books so I get some of the major characters' back stories. Preston & Child are always good.

Gideon's Sword by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Preston and Child generally write some pretty good fiction together. Gideon's Sword is the story of Gideon Crew, whose father was gunned down by federal agents when he was 12, and he doesn't learn until he is an adult and his mother is dying, that his father was one of the good guys, killed by a general named Tucker who feared he would disclose a secret that would take down Tucker and his friends. Gideon spent time as an art thief as a young man, and uses his technical expertise on security systems, plus a good dose of social engineering, throughout the story.

It turns out that Gideon's quest to destroy Tucker for killing his father doesn't take very long, in terms of the novel, and then he is recruited by a contractor for the Department of Homeland Security to do some work for them. He's halfway blackmailed into doing the work, as the contractor seems to know all about Gideon's past, and then discouraged from turning the job down to follow his own long term plans when they tell him that he only has a short time to live, with an inoperable aneurysm in his brain that could explode any time.

His mission is to intercept a Chinese defector, Mark Wu, at the airport in New York and to obtain certain information Wu is suspected to be bringing into the country about a "super weapon" the Chinese have been developing. I began to wonder at this point why in the world a secretive contractor for DHS would want to use an untried untested new hire to do the job, and continued to wonder it all the way to the denouement, when the head of the company discloses that all of their computer simulations showed that any other option would result in failure, while using Crew - an unpredictable rogue - had a strong probability of success.

This story has a very twisty plot, with a lot of creative details, but there were just too many unbelievable bits for me. Crew's social engineering skills always seemed up to the task at hand, and I had a hard time believing that so many people would believe his lies, especially when he used them on naturally suspicious people like police and TSA agents. It was a quick read, but I didn't feel it was Preston & Child's best work.

Tyrannosaur Canyon by Douglas Preston

Tyrannosaur Canyon takes place in the desert canyons of New Mexico. An old treasure hunter, Stem Winters, makes an amazing find, but is killed on his way back to civilization. A local rancher, Tom Broadbent, comes upon him as he lays dying, and is given a notebook filled with coded numbers, and the dying man's last wish is that it be given to his daughter.

When Broadbent begins to try to identify the dead man, and find his daughter, the killer begins to trail Broadbent, hoping to gain possession of the notebook. At this point, I found out some more back story on Wyman Ford, the hero of Preston's other novel I finished recently, Blasphemy. Ford had been a computer analyst on the payroll of the CIA, when an operation gone horribly wrong resulted in the death of his wife. He walked away from everything and entered a monastery, which is where Broadbent finds him.

He gives Ford the notebook to try to decrypt it, hoping for clues as to the identity and location of the Winter's daughter. Ford uses the laptop in the monastery to crunch the numbers (odd, how many monasteries have internet access?), and though he doesn't find the girl, he does figure out what the treasure is, and finds some clues as to its location.

When Broadbent leaves town to get some more information, the killer attacks and kidnaps his wife, Sally. He takes her to a prison room he's built in an abandoned mine, then demands the notebook from her husband. In the meantime, a dishonest professor who knows about the treasure, seduces a lab assistant at the university into doing some analysis of a part of the treasure he's gotten, somehow (this is never really explained), from Weathers. It is he who has sent the killer to get the notebook.

This one starts well, but comes to a rather unconvincing ending, in my opinion. Some of the scientific background of the thriller was interesting and appeared to be well-researched, however. I think I'm going to have to go back and find some even earlier works of Preston's though, as now I find that Broadbent and his wife have a back story, that was probably told in one of them.

Blasphemy by Douglas Preston

I felt like I was perhaps missing something as I read this novel by Preston. The protagonist, Ford Wyman, has a past, referred to every so often, that felt like it must have been explored in a previous novel. I may have to search a bit to find out if he published one, perhaps in conjunction with Lincoln Child. The only solo novel mentioned by Preston was Tyrannosaur Canyon, so it may be told in that one.

Former CIA operative Ford Wyman has hung up his shingle as a private investigator recently, and he is contacted by a presidential aide to investigate strange doings at a new supercollider site in New Mexico. The supercollider, nicknamed Isabella by the scientists who built and operate it, should have come online and begun producing results, but there are evidently glitches in the software causing mysterious delays, and the Navajo tribe on whose land it was built are getting restless, as well.

Shortly after Wyman arrives on site, one of the scientists is either murdered or commits suicide, adding a level of complexity to his investigation. He also encounters Kate, an old lover from his college days, who is part of the project, and must try to build on their prior relationship to get information.

The Navajo tribe just fired the lobbyist in Washington, DC who helped get the project removed, and he decides to stir up the pot to get their business back by contacting the Reverend Don Spates, telling him that the purpose of the project is to disprove biblical Creation. Spates, whose popularity has been fading after being caught with two prostitutes recently, sees a golden opportunity to boost his tv ratings and raise more money by publicly denouncing Isabella to his audience.

The secret that the scientists are keeping to themselves is that when the supercollider is running at full power some sort of entity appears on the computer screens, claiming to be God. As Wyman and the scientists begin to ask questions, the answers are interesting. "God" claims that the universe is a vast experimental equation, playing out over time. The conflict between this information and the Christian worldview plays a major part in the unfolding drama.

Ok, so the idea that the universe is a huge mathematical construct is one that I discussed with my fellow college students more than thirty years ago in dorm bull sessions. Couldn't Preston have come up with something more unique for "God" to reveal? Also, Preston's depiction of the Christian response to scientific inquiry seemed a bit hackneyed and media-generated. An ok read, but nothing earth-shattering, really.