New York: Warner Books, 2006.
Hardcover, $25.95
Murder, Mystery and Mayhem
Preston (who has a home in Round Pond, Maine) and Child are joint authors of a number of crime mystery books, and The Book of the Dead is the latest in their series featuring the Pendergast brothers, Aloysius and Diogenes. This book, the sequel to Dance of Death, has a culminating showdown between them. The good guys’ best hope rests in Aloysius undergoing regression into his childhood experience to understand exactly what went wrong between the brothers. What turned Diogenes evil, unleashing a diabolical vengefulness towards his sibling? With that insight, the crime fighters could better determine his motives and methods. In order to regress, Aloysius uses a method the authors call “Chongg Ran,” which they describe as a “certain ancient discipline, a secret mystical philosophy practiced by a tiny order of monks in Bhutan and Tibet.” This form of concentration “allows the practitioner to unleash the full potential of the human mind.” Like Freud’s concept in psychoanalysis, the retrieval of memories from deep in the unconscious could allow one to understand and alter negative outcomes. Although Chongg Ran certainly can have its real equivalent in Eastern religion, the practice with this particular name is an invention of the authors. The Pendergasts are imbued with many other similarly clever criminal or crime-fighting strategies, often amazing and esoteric. Thrills and chills, close calls, double identities, the supernatural and bizarre- they’re all here in the story. But just as the centerpiece of the plot is a museum’s simulated setting with psychosis-inducing powers, the whole book seems to be similarly overdone, confusingly full of detail. Preston and Child pour on descriptive rhetoric, they relish embellishment.
When Aloysius connects with his past, we are told, “Pendergast remembered all. It came rushing back in perfect, exquisite detail, every hideous second, every moment of the most terrifying experience in his life. He remembered The Event. As the memory crashed over him like a tidal wave, he felt his brain overload, his neurons shut down…” Much of the book’s writing is in that tone: melodramatic, sonorous, gothic. Suffice it to say: there are some plot inventions and twists in the story that are creative, interesting. Whether the effort expended for that experience is worth it is ultimately a matter of personal choice. For this reader,”exquisite detail” created “brain overload.” I know how Aloysius felt.