City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17) by Douglas Preston , Lincoln Child

• Release Date: January 16 2018
• Genre: Mystery/Thriller
• Author: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

When Grace Ozmian, the beautiful and reckless daughter of a wealthy tech billionaire, first goes missing, the NYPD assumes she has simply sped off on another wild adventure. Until the young woman’s body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens, the head nowhere to be found.

Lieutenant CDS Vincent D’Agosta quickly takes the lead. He knows his investigation will attract fierce scrutiny, so D’Agosta is delighted when FBI Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast shows up at the crime scene assigned to the case. “I feel rather like Brer Rabbit being thrown into the briar patch,” Pendergast tells D’Agosta, “because I have found you here, in charge. Just like when we first met, back at the Museum of Natural History.”

But neither Pendergast nor D’Agosta are prepared for what lies ahead. A diabolical presence is haunting the greater metropolitan area, and Grace Ozmian was only the first of many victims to be murdered . . . and decapitated. Worse still, there’s something unique to the city itself that has attracted the evil eye of the killer.

As mass hysteria sets in, Pendergast and D’Agosta find themselves in the crosshairs of an opponent who has threatened the very lifeblood of the city. It’ll take all of Pendergast’s skill to unmask this most dangerous foe-let alone survive to tell the tale.

Praise:

“As always, the authors have crafted a story that is almost impossible to pull away from, and their prose is as elegant as fans have come to expect. Pendergast continues to be one of thrillerdom’s most exciting and intriguing series leads, and the series remains among the most reliable in the genre.”-Booklist

“VERDICT: Fans of the Pendergast series will be delighted with this latest romp and its careful plotting and suspense should appeal to mystery fans generally as well.”-Library Journal

“This, yet another masterpiece by Preston & Child, will be the perfect way to start out your New Year. Just as it was when D’Agosta and Pendergast first met up in the thrilling book, Relic, they are together once again solving a crime of mammoth proportions. Preston, Child, and their well-known characters are always sheer perfection!”-Amy Lignor, Suspense Magazine

“One of the best in the series–tense and tightly wound, with death relentlessly circling, stalking, lurking behind every shadow.”-Kirkus Reviews

Review:

One or many with bizarre skilled savagery on the hunt, and quite possibly may be a capable adversary for  the highly skilled FBI Special Agent Pendergast, who turns up to a crime scene with his vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith with driver Proctor at the wheel, and Lieutenant CDS Vincent D’Agost, both longtime crime busters on the chase.

A race against answers, with some motives and then the theories starting to mount, the media on a frenzy and the mayor under pressure due to the free rain of the killer or the killers. Connected or not? Serial or not?

There will be a city of endless heads rolling, body count high, visceral and no words wasted, no lull in thrill, it just keeps you reading on hooked in the narrative, coming alive before the reader, scenes unfolding, showing before you with the great writing craft of authors, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Excerpts:

 “…classic Pendergast, never failing to astonish, taking delight in confounding everyone around him with some outrageous statement.”

“The mayor strode forward with a heavy step. “Aside from putting forty detectives and another hundred uniformed officers on the case, we’re pulling over two thousand officers into overtime patrol, and we’re taking many, many other steps I cannot enumerate for security reasons. I can assure you that every possible action is being taken to keep our citizens safe.”