Monks at a Tibetan monastery so remote it has been overlooked by the Chinese ask visiting students, FBI trouble-shooter Aloysius Pendergast and his ward, Constance, to retrieve a stolen object.
They reluctantly explain that it is an object of ultimate evil, too dangerous to look at, not to be unveiled until the end time. Pendergast has to find an object they are unable to describe. They do know who took it: a recent refugee from a failed mountain-climbing expedition. Pendergast takes up the trail which puts Constance and him aboard an ocean liner making its maiden voyage across the Atlantic.
Pendergast is a terrific charcter, white-haired, aloof, independently wealthy, with qualities of insight reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes. He's been prominently featured in a number of Preston and Childs novels, notably the Diogenes trilogy which pitted him against his evil brother and immediately preceded this latest book. The books, I might add, are related but are designed to stand-alone.
The ocean liner remains the setting for most of the story. The task is simple: identify the person in possession of the object and retrieve it. The possessor killed the original thief and now he is leaving bodies in his wake (literally and figuratively) on the ocean cruise. The tension heightens as the short-handed crew tries to handle an emergency they are not equipped for and the 4,000 passengers become panicky.
Preston and Childs, who began their collaboration with the monster story Relic (filmed with Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore), have added another fine thriller to their collection. I have been a fan since Relic, in which a monster created by a gene-altering drug from South American jungles, is prowling a major New York museum.
Since that novel, the authors have written a series of thrillers that have flirted more subtly with ever-present supernatural elements. Actually, this latest entry has the strongest use of the supernatural they've had in awhile, although it still does not overwhelm the story (for those who prefer their thrillers straight-up).
This is quite a page-turner...I stayed up late to finish it. But then I always do with Preston and Childs' books.
