A Guide to Preston & Child’s Mysteries & Thrillers According to the Duo Themselves
It’s not a coincidence that the names Preston & Child have the ring of a crime-fighting duo—this pair of authors have been writing crime and suspense books together for almost thirty years! Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are the authors of the popular Pendergast series, a long-running police procedural starring the FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast.
Since then, they’ve added another series to their roster: Nora Kelly. She’s a young curator at the Santa Fe Institute of Archaeology who partners up with FBI Agent Corrie Swanson on mysteries thought long-buried but since uncovered with old bones, mummified corpses, and more.
We sat down with Preston & Child to ask two important questions: what are the ideal first books for a new P&C reader and what are their favorite books they’ve written?
NS: What are the ideal first books for a reader new to Preston & Child to pick up?
P&C: The two of us are asked this all the time; interestingly; as we’ve written more novels together, the answer keeps getting clearer.
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Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum’s dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human…
But the museum’s directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.
Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who–or what–is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
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In an ancient tunnel underneath New York City, a charnel house is discovered.
Inside are thirty-six bodies—all murdered and mutilated more than a century ago.
While FBI agent Pendergast investigates the old crimes, identical killings start to terrorize the city.
The nightmare has begun.
Again.
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Nora Kelly, a young curator at the Santa Fe Institute of Archaeology, is approached by historian Clive Benton with a once-in-a-lifetime proposal: to lead a team in search of the so-called “Lost Camp” of the tragic Donner Party. This was a group of pioneers who earned a terrible place in American history when they became snow-bound in the California mountains in 1847, their fate unknown until the first skeletonized survivors stumbled out of the wilderness, raving about starvation, murder-and cannibalism.
Benton tells Kelly he has stumbled upon an amazing find: the long-sought diary of one of the victims, which has an enigmatic description of the Lost Camp. Nora agrees to lead an expedition to locate and excavate it-to reveal its long-buried secrets.
Once in the mountains, however, they learn that discovering the camp is only the first step in a mounting journey of fear. For as they uncover old bones, they expose the real truth of what happened, one that is far more shocking and bizarre than mere cannibalism. And when those ancient horrors lead to present-day violence on a grand scale, rookie FBI agent Corrie Swanson is assigned the case…only to find that her first investigation might very well be her last.
NS: What are your own favorite thrillers from among the many you’ve written?
P&C: The two of us have our private favorites, of course, but there are several we both look back on with a special pride. Since we’ve put together a list of ‘what books should I start with?’ elsewhere, we’ll keep those titles off limits for this list and concentrate instead on what veteran Preston & Child readers—ourselves included—might find most rewarding.
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When FBI Special Agent Pendergast discovers a murder in the attic of a Long Island estate, a scorched claw print leads him down a dark trail of unspeakable terror.
A body is found in the attic of a fabulous Long Island estate.
There is a claw print scorched into the wall, and the stench of sulfur chokes the air.
When FBI Special Agent Pendergast investigates the gruesome crime, he discovers that thirty years ago four men conjured something unspeakable.
Has the devil come to claim his due?
Some things can’t be undone.
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It begins with murder. One of Pendergast’s most implacable, most feared enemies is found on his doorstep, dead. Pendergast has no idea who is responsible for the killing, or why the body was brought to his home. The mystery has all the hallmarks of the perfect crime, save for an enigmatic clue: a piece of turquoise lodged in the stomach of the deceased.
The gem leads Pendergast to an abandoned mine on the shore of California’s Salton Sea, which in turn propels him on a journey of discovery deep into his own family’s sinister past. But Pendergast learns there is more at work than a ghastly episode of family history: he is being stalked by a subtle killer bent on vengeance over an ancient transgression. And he soon becomes caught in a wickedly clever plot, which leaves him stricken in mind and body, and propels him toward a reckoning beyond anything he could ever have imagined . . .
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A desperate bargain is broken…
Constance Greene confronts Manhattan’s most dangerous serial killer, Enoch Leng, bartering for her sister’s life – but she is betrayed and turned away empty-handed, incandescent with rage.
A clever trap is set…
Unknown to Leng, Pendergast’s brother, Diogenes, appears unexpectedly, offering to help—for mysterious reasons of his own. Disguised as a cleric, Diogenes establishes himself in New York’s notorious Five Points slum, manipulating events like a chess master, watching Leng’s every move…and awaiting his own chance to strike.
A vengeful angel will not be deterred…
Meanwhile, as Pendergast focuses on saving the unstable Constance in her fanatical quest for vengeance, she strikes out on her own: to rescue her beloved siblings from a tragic fate and take savage retribution on Leng. But Leng is one step ahead and has a surprise for them all…
P.S. If we could include one other title that checks off the same boxes as the above, it would be BEYOND THE ICE LIMIT. When we wrote THE ICE LIMIT fifteen years earlier, we never imagined we would ever write a sequel—even though we were shocked by how many of our readers requested or even demanded one. When this interest refused to go away, we ultimately found a way to satisfy it—and save the world in the process—in this penultimate Gideon Crew novel. It allowed us to, once again, bring together beloved characters from various earlier books who had never met in the original novel, and to turn the adventure in a direction we never would have believed when we penned its first chapter. Altogether, a book we never expected to write—but one that, looking back, we’re very proud of.
Five years ago, the mysterious and inscrutable head of Effective Engineering Solutions, Eli Glinn, led a mission to recover a gigantic meteorite–the largest ever discovered–from a remote island off the coast of South America. The mission ended in disaster when their ship, the Rolvaag, foundered in a vicious storm in the Antarctic waters and broke apart, sinking-along with its unique cargo-to the ocean floor. One hundred and eight crew members perished, and Eli Glinn was left paralyzed.
But this was not all. The tragedy revealed something truly terrifying: the meteorite they tried to retrieve was not, in fact, simply a rock. Instead, it was a complex organism from the deep reaches of space.
Now, that organism has implanted itself in the sea bed two miles below the surface-and it is growing. If it is not destroyed, the planet will be doomed. There is only one hope: for Glinn and his team to annihilate it, a task which requires Gideon’s expertise with nuclear weapons. But as Gideon and his colleagues soon discover, the “meteorite” has a mind of its own-and it has no intention of going quietly…
The largest known meteorite has been discovered, entombed in the earth for millions of years on a frigid, desolate island off the southern tip of Chile. At four thousand tons, this treasure seems impossible to move. New York billionaire Palmer Lloyd is determined to have this incredible find for his new museum. Stocking a cargo ship with the finest scientists and engineers, he builds a flawless expedition. But from the first approach to the meteorite, people begin to die. A frightening truth is about to unfold: The men and women of the Rolvaag are not taking this ancient, enigmatic object anywhere. It is taking them.
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Is it suicide or… sacrifice?
Agent Swanson brings in archaeologist Nora Kelly to investigate. When a second body is found—exactly like the other—the two realize the case runs deeper than they imagined. As Corrie and Nora pursue their investigation into remote canyons, haunted ruins, and long-lost rituals, they find themselves confronting a dark power that, disturbed from its long slumber, threatens to exact an unspeakable price.
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