Review:- Douglas PRESTON & Lincoln CHILD – “The Wheel of Darkness”

Publ: 2007
Pensby Library
ISBN: 978-0-7528-8281- 9
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 513p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
I fancied an easy to read thriller and the plot of this one sounmded good.

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
The eighth book in the Prendergast series. FBI agent Prendergast has taken his ward Constance on a whirlwind Grand Tour, hoping to give her closure and a sense of the world that she's missed. They head to Tibet, where Pendergast intensively trained in martial arts and spiritual studies. At a remote monastery, they learn that a rare and dangerous artifact the monks have been guarding for generations has been mysteriously stolen. Pendergast agrees to take up the search. The trail leads him and Constance to the maiden voyage of the Queen Victoria, the world's largest and most luxurious passenger liner--and to an Atlantic crossing fraught with terror.

What did you think of the characters and style?
The hero is a bit like a James Bond, almost tongue in cheek. Not a set of characters to be taken seriously but good fun as thrillers go.

Would I recommend it?
Not a lot but some James Bond fans might appreciate a different hero.

DOUGLAS PRESTON was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. His first job was as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. His stint at the museum resulted in his first nonfiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, as well as his first novel, Relic, co-authored with Lincoln Child, which was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures. Relic was followed by a string of other thrillers co-written with Child, many featuring eccentric FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast. Preston spends his free time riding horses in New Mexico and gunkholing around the Maine coast in an old lobster boat. He counts in his ancestry the poet Emily Dickinson, the newspaperman Horace Greeley, and the infamous murderer and opium addict Amasa Greenough.

LINCOLN CHILD is the coauthor, with Douglas Preston, of Relic, Riptide, The Cabinet of Curiosities, and other bestsellers. He lives with his wife and daughter in Morristown, New Jersey.