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![Brimstone (Pendergast Book 5) by [Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51pbIXwiZ6L._SY346_.jpg)
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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.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherGrand Central Publishing
- Publication dateAugust 1, 2004
- File size975 KB
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"A devilishly clever maelstrom of murder, ancient conspiracies, decadence, art, religious controversy and international intrigue!" -- The Flint Journal
"Highly compelling thriller Preston and Child prove that the devil is indeed in the details." -- Entertainment Weekly (Editors Choice, Grade A-)
"The authors have outdone themselves with marvelous set pieces and an intriguing mystery. Buy several copies." -- Library Journal
This is the perfect thriller to stuff into a beach bag during the coming dog days." -- Publishers Review (Starred) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Readers can sign up for The Pendergast File, a monthly "strangely entertaining note" from the authors, at their website, www.PrestonChild.com. The authors welcome visitors to their alarmingly active Facebook page, where they post regularly. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Brimstone
By Douglas J. PrestonTime Warner AudioBooks
Copyright © 2004 Douglas J. PrestonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 9781586216641
Chapter One
Agnes Torres parked her white Ford Escort in the little parking areaoutside the hedge and stepped into the cool dawn air. The hedgeswere twelve feet high and as impenetrable as a brick wall; only theshingled peak of the big house could be seen from the street. Butshe could hear the surf thundering and smell the salt air of theinvisible ocean beyond.Agnes carefully locked the car-it paid to be careful, even in thisneighborhood-and, fumbling with the massive set of keys, found theright one and stuck it into the lock. The heavy sheet-metal gateswung inward, exposing a broad expanse of green lawn that sweptthree hundred yards down to the beach, flanked by two dunes. A redlight on a keypad just inside the gate began blinking, and sheentered the code with nervous fingers. She had thirty seconds beforethe sirens went off. Once, she had dropped her keys and couldn'tpunch in the code in time, and the thing had awakened practicallythe whole town and brought three police cars. Mr. Jeremy had been soangry she thought he would breathe fire. It had been awful.
Agnes punched the last button and the light turned green. Shebreathed a sigh of relief, locked the gate, and paused to crossherself. Then she drew out her rosary, held the first beadreverently between her fingers. Fully armed now, she turned andbegan waddling across the lawn on short, thick legs, walking slowlyto allow herself time to intone the Our Fathers, the Hail Marys, andthe Glory Bes in quiet Spanish. She always said a decade on herrosary when entering the Grove Estate.
The vast gray house loomed in front of her, a single eyebrow windowin the roof peak frowning like the eye of a Cyclops, yellow againstthe steel gray of the house and sky. Seagulls circled above, cryingrestlessly.
Agnes was surprised. She never remembered that light on before. Whatwas Mr. Jeremy doing in the attic at seven o'clock in the morning?Normally he didn't get out of bed until noon.
Finishing her prayers, she replaced the rosary and crossed herselfagain: a swift, automatic gesture, made with a rough hand that hadseen decades of domestic work. She hoped Mr. Jeremy wasn't stillawake. She liked to work in an empty house, and when he was up,everything was so unpleasant: the cigarette ashes he dropped justbehind her mop, the dishes he heaped in the sink just after she hadwashed, the comments and the endless swearing to himself, into thephone or at the newspaper, always followed by a harsh laugh. Hisvoice was like a rusty knife-it cut and slashed the air. He was thinand mean and stank of cigarettes and drank brandy at lunch andentertained sodomites at all hours of the day and night. Once he hadtried to speak Spanish with her but she had quickly put an end tothat. Nobody spoke Spanish to her except family and friends, andAgnes Torres spoke English perfectly well enough.
On the other hand, Agnes had worked for many people in her life, andMr. Jeremy was very correct with her employment. He paid her well,always on time, he never asked her to stay late, never changed herschedule, and never accused her of stealing. Once, early on, he hadblasphemed against the Lord in her presence, and she had spoken tohim about it, and he had apologized quite civilly and had never doneit again.
She came up the curving flagstone path to the back door, inserted asecond key, and once again fumbled nervously with the keypad,turning off the internal alarm.
The house was gloomy and gray, the mullioned windows in frontlooking out on a long seaweed-strewn beach to an angry ocean. Thesound of the surf was muffled here and the house was hot. Unusuallyhot.
She sniffed. There was a strange smell in the air, like a greasyroast left too long in the oven. She waddled into the kitchen but itwas empty. The dishes were heaped up, and the place was a mess asusual, stale food everywhere, and yet the smell wasn't coming fromhere. It looked like Mr. Jeremy had cooked fish the night before.She didn't usually clean his house on Tuesdays, but he'd had one ofhis countless dinner parties the prior evening. Labor Day had comeand gone a month before, but Mr. Jeremy's weekend parties wouldn'tend until November.
She went into the living room and sniffed the air again. Somethingwas definitely cooking somewhere. And there was another smell on topof it, as if somebody had been playing with matches.
Agnes Torres felt a vague sense of alarm. Everything was more orless as she had left it when she went away yesterday, at two in theafternoon, except that the ashtrays were overflowing with butts andthe usual empty wine bottles stood on the sideboard, dirty disheswere piled in the sink, and someone had dropped soft cheese on therug and stepped in it.
She raised her plump face and sniffed again. The smell came fromabove.
She mounted the sweep of stairs, treading softly, and paused tosniff at the landing. She tiptoed past Grove's study, past hisbedroom door, continued down the hall, turned the dogleg, and cameto the door to the third floor. The smell was stronger here and theair was heavier, warmer. She tried to open the door but found itlocked.
She took out her bunch of keys, clinked through them, and unlockedthe door. Madre de Dios-the smell was much worse. She mounted thesteep unfinished stairs, one, two, three, resting her arthritic legsfor a moment on each tread. She rested again at the top, breathingheavily.
The attic was vast, with one long hall off which were half a dozenunused children's bedrooms, a playroom, several bathrooms, and anunfinished attic space jammed with furniture and boxes and horriblemodern paintings.
At the far end of the hall, she saw a bar of yellow light under thedoor to the last bedroom.
She took a few tentative steps forward, paused, crossed herselfagain. Her heart was hammering, but with her hand clutching therosary she knew she was safe. As she approached the door, the smellgrew steadily worse.
She tapped lightly on it, just in case some guest of Mr. Jeremy wassleeping in there, hungover or sick. But there was no response. Shegrasped the doorknob and was surprised to find it slightly warm tothe touch. Was there a fire? Had somebody fallen asleep, cigarettein hand? There was definitely a faint smell of smoke, but it wasn'tjust smoke somehow: it was something stronger. Something foul.
She tried the doorknob, found it locked. It reminded her of thetime, when she was a little girl at the convent school, when crazyold Sister Ana had died and they had to force open her door.
Somebody on the other side might need her assistance; might be sickor incapacitated. Once again she fumbled with the keys. She had noidea which one went to the door, so it wasn't until perhaps thetenth try that the key turned. Holding her breath, she opened thedoor, but it moved only an inch before stopping, blocked bysomething. She pushed, pushed harder, heard a crash on the otherside.
Santa Marma, it was going to wake up Mr. Jeremy. She waited, butthere was no sound of his tread, no slamming bathroom door orflushing toilet, none of the sounds that signaled his irasciblerising.
She pushed at the door and was able to get her head inside, holdingher breath against the smell. A thin screen of haze drifted in theroom, and it was as hot as an oven. The room had been shut up foryears-Mr. Jeremy despised children-and dirty spiderwebs hung fromthe peeling beadboard walls. The crash had been caused by thetoppling of an old armoire that had been pushed up against the door.In fact, all the furniture in the room seemed to have been piledagainst the door, except for the bed. The bed, she could see, was onthe far side of the room. Mr. Jeremy lay on it, fully clothed.
"Mr. Jeremy?"
But Agnes Torres knew there would be no answer. Mr. Jeremy wasn'tsleeping, not with his charred eyes burned permanently open, theashy cone of his mouth frozen in a scream and his blackenedtongue-swelled to the size of a chorizo sausage-sticking straight upfrom it like a flagpole. A sleeping man wouldn't be lying with hiselbows raised above the bed, fists clenched so hard that blood hadleaked between the fingers. A sleeping man wouldn't have his torsoscorched and caved in upon itself like a burned log. She had seenmany dead people during her childhood in Colombia, and Mr. Jeremylooked deader than any of them. He was as dead as they come.
She heard someone speaking and realized it was herself, murmuring Enel nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espmritu Santo ... Shecrossed herself yet again, fumbling out her rosary, unable to moveher feet or take her eyes from the scene in the room. There was ascorched mark on the floor, right at the foot of the bed: a markwhich Agnes recognized.
In that moment, she understood exactly what had happened to Mr.Jeremy Grove.
A muffled cry escaped her throat and she suddenly had the energy toback out of the room and shut the door. She fumbled with the keysand relocked it, all the while murmuring Creo en Dios, Padretodopoderoso, creador del cielo y de la tierra. She crossed herselfagain and again and again, clutching the rosary and holding it up toher chest as she backed down the hall, step by step, sobs minglingwith her mumbled prayers.
The cloven hoofprint burned into the floor told her everything sheneeded to know. The devil had finally come for Jeremy Grove.
Continues...
Excerpted from Brimstoneby Douglas J. Preston Copyright © 2004 by Douglas J. Preston. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000FC1VTW
- Publisher : Grand Central Publishing; 1st edition (August 1, 2004)
- Publication date : August 1, 2004
- Language : English
- File size : 975 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 752 pages
- Page numbers source ISBN : 044653143X
- Best Sellers Rank: #19,965 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #15 in Occult Suspense
- #101 in Occult Horror
- #161 in Occult Fiction
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
Lincoln Child is the co-author, with Douglas Preston, of such highly-acclaimed thrillers as CROOKED RIVER, OLD BONES, VERSES FOR THE DEAD, CABINET OF CURIOSITIES, and RELIC, the latter two of which were chosen by an NPR poll as among the 100 greatest thrillers ever written. He has also published seven thrillers of his own, most recently the Jeremy Logan books FULL WOLF MOON and THE FORGOTTEN ROOM. 26 of his joint and solo books have become bestsellers, 3 of which debuted at #1 on the New York Times list. He lives in Sarasota, Florida.
Douglas Preston is the author of thirty-six books, both fiction and nonfiction, twenty-nine of which have been New York Times bestsellers, with several reaching the number 1 position. He has worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His first novel, RELIC, co-authored with Lincoln Child, was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures, which launched the famed Pendergast series of novels. His recent nonfiction book, THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, is also in production as a film. His latest book, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD, tells the true story of the discovery of a prehistoric city in an unexplored valley deep in the Honduran jungle. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian. He is the recipient of numerous writing awards in the US and Europe, including an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Pomona College. He currently serves as president of the Authors Guild, the nation's oldest and largest association of authors and journalists.
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This novel reintroduces Vincent D'Agosta who has been missing for a couple of books now, and Laura Hayward, who we met back in the second book Reliquary, when she was a lowly transit cop. They bring some welcome depth to the story, and I like the connection between them. It's especially interesting seeing the role reversal from their last encounter - now Hayward is high up on the command chain, while D'Agosta has been busted down to a lowly Southampton Sargent position. This book also introduces us to the existence of Pendergast's brother, the evil Diogenes and sets things up for his story arc in later novels.
A really fun read, but this is the first in the series where I do feel the need to point out a couple of flaws. No spoilers here, but firstly there's a large subplot featuring a criminal turned preacher in New York that really feels out of place. It seems to exist solely to hammer home the point that Hayward is smarter, tougher, and better in a tight situation then all the other cops, especially the male ones. If you did read Reliquary, it's the exact same thing. Hayward suggests a plan, it's shot down, the alternative plan fails horribly and Hayward saves the day. Nothing else really comes out of it, so it feels like 100 pages of filler. Would have much preferred to see her working with Pendergast and D'Agosta on the devil killings case.
My biggest complaint is that for the first time in this series, the authors throw a cliffhanger in at the end of the novel (There was a small one at the end of Relic, but it wasn't this serious) . The beauty of this series up until now is that they were all truly stand alones - you could pick up any of the first few books and be guaranteed a full story. Not here. It's a very ambiguous ending which leaves you having to buy the next one to find out what happened to Pendergast. Annoying! I hope this doesn't become a regular thing.
Anyway still a very entertaining read, but not up to the standard of the previous novels, especially Cabinet of Curiosities.
As I mentioned above, "Brimstone" once again finds Pendergast investigating a murder that seems tied to the occult. Specifically, he is investigating the bizarre death of art critic Jeremy Grove, who has been found burned to death in a room untouched by fire. Adding to the mystery is the overpowering stench of sulfur and what appears to be a cloven hoof burned into the floor. To assist in his investigation, Pendergast calls upon Vincent D'Agosta, previously seen in "Relic" and "Reliquary", who has been languishing in the Southampton Police Department after an abortive turn as a novelist. As more victims fall prey to the seemingly demonic killer, and as the public begins to see the murders as Scripture fulfilled, the two investigators race against the clock to solve Preston and Child's most puzzling mystery yet.
That stated, what makes "Brimstone" so successful is that Preston and Child manage to weave in a much larger set of plot lines, characters and settings than usual. Whereas in "Still Life with Crows" the question of Pendergast's ward, Constance, was blatantly tacked on in a form of in novel advertising, in "Brimstone" she actually has a role to play and fits much better within the structure of the book. Likewise, even though the supernatural thriller element is always paramount, the authors are quite successful in blending in elements of espionage, international assassins and history, the result of which is perhaps their richest, most complex novel to date. Finally, a significant portion of the action takes place overseas, which creates an intriguing dichotomy of Pendergast being more in his element culturally, but significantly weakened for not being on his home turf.
Furthermore, Lincoln and Child gleefully (but entirely respectfully) draw upon their literary heroes such as Poe and Lovecraft. The result is a novel that has much of the style and menace of these two authors, while incorporating the genuinely fresh take that one expects from these two authors. As such, I can wholeheartedly endorse "Brimstone" as a superb return to form for Preston and Child. It is perhaps their darkest novel to date, and infuses the character of Pendergast with new life, and more importantly, new mysteries. For loyal readers, some questions will be resolved, but far more will be left unanswered, as what one might call the "Pendergast Mythos" continues to evolve. "Brimstone" has vaulted to the top of my list for Preston and Child novels (just below the trinity of "Relic", "Riptide" and "Thunderhead") and is by far the best Pendergast novel since "Relic". A real treat for the upcoming fall season, and especially Halloween, don't pass this one by.
Jake Mohlman
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