The Case Of The Toxic Elixir
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s creation Aloysius Pendergrast, is an FBI agent, and a thriller hero like no other. He has immense personal wealth and works for the FBI for the adventure. He is very handsome, has a face “so finely modeled that it could have been carved by Michelangelo,” and responds coolly to every crisis by inclining his head.
In the 14th book of the series, however, he is mostly out of action. It begins with the corpse of his son Alban being deposited on his doorstep. An autopsy that Pendergast watches expressionlessly, reveals a rare turquoise stone in the dead man’s stomach. Pendergast is convinced this is a message sent to him, but why and by whom—he has to find that out, even it means going over the heads of the cops investigating the murder, and travelling to strange places.
In a parallel plot, a guard at the New York’s Museum of Natural history is found murdered, and there seems to a link between the two seemingly unconnected incidents.
When Pendergast follows the lead of the blue stone, he is exposed to a deadly poison that leaves him bed-ridden and will lead to a very painful death, unless an antidote is found very quickly. Pendergast’s adversary is a ruthless billionaire avenging his own son’s death, which was caused by a genetic illness, which in turn could be traced to a deadly elixir made and sold by Pendergast’s great-great-grandfather a century ago.
The plot is as convoluted as it is bizarre and because it has so many what-the-heck moments it is also hugely entertaining. Eventually, two very accomplished women race against time to look for the precious ingredients for the antidote to the toxin that is killing Pendergast. One of them is the elegant Constance Greene, who lives with him as his “ward;” the other is his old friend, Margo Green.
The breathless climax leads to mayhem and massive destruction at the Museum, as well as the Brooklyn Botanical Garden housing rare plants. The weaponry goes from a giant Indonesian buckthorn to bottles of acid. It takes a fiendish imagination to cook up a plot like that; the next Pendergast book will be keenly awaited, just to see how the writers top this one.
Blue Labyrinth
By Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Publisher: Grand Central
Pages: 403
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