TYRANNOSAUR CANYON, Douglas Preston. 363pp.
This new thriller is from Douglas Preston, half of my favorite writing team of Preston and Childs, authors of Relic, Reliquary, and the Pendergast/Diogenes Trilogy.
Apollo Astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt pick up a rock in a crater during the last manned mission to the lunar surface and decades later, it factors into a drama played out in the desert of the Southwest.
From a high perch, a sniper kills a prospector leading his donkey across the desert. Tom Broadbent, drawn by the sound of the gunshot as he's out riding, is asked by the dying prospector to give his daughter his book. The prospector dies, unidentified, with no time to tell Broadbent who his daughter is, or why he was shot.
When Broadbent brings back the cops, there's no body, no donkey. And now the sniper is looking for him, trying to fulfill the mission given him by his patron. Along the way, a secret government agency becomes involved.
With the cops suspicious of Broadbent who has withheld the book, filled with sets of numbers, Broadbent and his wife ally themselves with a monk in their mission, and despite several major twists and shifts, uncover the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
I hesitate to give too many more details about this novel. You would not thank me.
This is an excellent read and typical of what I've come to expect from Preston and Childs, whether writing together or individually.
