Title: Reliquary (Pendergast #2)

Author: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Publisher: 1997

Genre: Horror

Pages: 464

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf Project

Hidden deep beneath Manhattan lies a warren of tunnels, sewers, and galleries, mostly forgotten by those who walk the streets above. There lies the ultimate secret of the Museum Beat. When two grotesquely deformed skeletons are found deep in the mud off the Manhattan shoreline, museum curator Margo Green is called in to aid the investigation. Margo must once again team up with police lieutenant D'Agosta and FBI agent Pendergast, as well as the brilliant Dr. Frock, to try and solve the puzzle. The trail soon leads deep underground, where they will face the awakening of a slumbering nightmare... in Reliquary, from bestselling coauthors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Finally read this one after picking it up at a used book store a few months back. I enjoyed the character of Pendergast in Relic so it seemed that I would enjoy the sequel to that book and the next in the Pendergast series. And I did! Overall, this is a very Michael Crichton style science adventure story. We get another excursion to the New York Natural History Museum’s labs to solve the murders of multiple headless corpses. Along the way we encounter some familiar faces and meet new ones. I especially loved the team up of D’Agosta and Pendergast against the majority of the NYPD. There are some super creepy scenes in this book, mostly the underground ones. They kept the story moving along and not get mired in the techno-babble in the lab. The last 50 pages are one big suspenseful scene. I have another in this series sitting on my Unread Shelf. I may have to push it to the top part of the stack. I probably won’t ever read all 30 books in this series, but I might just knock off a few more in the upcoming years.

Next up on the TBR pile: