For some time now, I’ve been reviewing the works by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, who are just referred to as Preston & Child. I’ve been enjoying their Agent Pendergast series for many years.
I also read some of their stand-alone novels that linked in. Their recent Gideon Crew series was a mixed bag. They set it up to have a finite series, as the main character was dying of an incurrable disease, though we were never told how many novels would be in the series. It was nice that they wrapped up the storyline started in The Ice Limit though.
After it ended, they launched a new series using a couple of characters who have appeared in the Pendergast series: Nora Kelly and Connie Swanson. It’s called the “Nora Kelly series,” though I kind of think it should be named for both as both are treated equally in the series. We see their career outside the particular case they are working. And often the story switches between the two until they are working together. But whatever.
Nora Kelly is an archaeologist operating in Santa Fe, N.M, and was introduced in the novel Thunderhead where she met Bill Smithback. Smithback was a minor character in the Pendergast series, a reporter that annoyed Pendergast, but did help. They married, and she moved to New York, where she helped out Pendergast in a few novels (saving his life in one) before Bill was killed in Cemetery Dance. She later returned to the Southwest, again working as an archaeologist in Santa Fe. She is apparently based on a real person, a grandmother of one of the authors who was an amateur archaelogist and author.
Corrie Swanson was introduced in Still Life With Crows, where she met Pendergast in her hometown in Kansas as a high-school student. He was able to get her out of that life, and she was a very minor character in a few books. She decided to pursue a career as an FBI agent after attending John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I thought that was a big change as she struck me as being on a different life path, but clearly her meeting Pendergast changed that. She had a big part to play in White Fire, which could be considered another prequel to this series, and has since graduated and is now a probationary FBI agent, assigned to the Albuquerque, N.M., office.
In the first novel of the series, Old Bones, Nora is approached by a historian with new information on the Donner party, which gives details on a previously unknown camp of the party. The Donner party is a real part of history: passengers on a wagon train that got stuck in the mountains of California in winter of 1846-47 and resorted to cannibalism! But this new camp is fictional. There is also a possible hoard of stolen gold worth $20 million!
While this is going on, Corrie is investigating a bizarre case of grave robbing, and find other cases that link to it, including a disappearance of a young lady. The connections seem to point to one of the people who died at the Lost Camp, as all the victims are descendants of this person! Soon the group at the camp is plagued by issues, including two deaths, and Nora and Corrie have to figure out what is going on and who is behind it without getting killed themselves.
The next novel is The Scorpion’s Tale. Here Corrie starts things off with a new case and soon pulls in Nora for help. A sheriff has stopped a relic hunter and found a mummified body. Corrie, due to her forensics background, is sent to investigate, but when she realizes there is more to it, she brings in Nora. What they find about the body is bizarre. Moreso, when it’s learned how he died! And this gives them a clue to a real mystery in the area: the Victorio Peak treasure. Now it’s a real legend, but most think the treasure doesn’t really exist.
However, it seems there are two groups of treasure hunters out there. One is looking for the Victorio Peak treasure; the other, it’s not clear. Both of these groups are tied to the relic hunter and the body, and thus this puts both Nora and Corrie in their crossfire. A few people will die along the way. We won’t get the whole story until it’s all revealed by the end of the book, with a little help from Agent Pendergast.
In this one, we also get an appearance by Nora’s brother, who plays a small part, and we are introduced to an interesting sheriff in the area. I know the brother returns in the next book, but will the sheriff? And Corrie’s boss has a slightly bigger role in this one as well.
The third novel is Diablo Mesa, and will be out in early 2022. This time, Nora kicks things off. An Elon Musk-type tech billionarie wants Nora to head up an archaelogical dig: the Roswell UFO crash site. Nora is put off by this as she feels it’s all nonsense. And it would hurt her reputation. Her brother is also hired for the dig. However, in digging at the site, they discover a murder victim. And as the land is federal land, the FBI is responsible for investigating. So, this brings in Corrie again.
I hope they are able to do more with these two characters. They have to contend with the fact that FBI agents are often rotated to other offices. We know Corrie is on her two-year probationary period, but after it ends, would she stay there or be moved elsewhere? Plus they have to figure out how to get them to work together on a case. So far they have rotated between which of the two start things off.
Hopefully this won’t get boring or feel contrived. And so far they have been working in real history and legends of the West, so it will be interesting to see what is used next. But overall, I think this is a good series and should be better than the Gideon Cross series.
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