A few years back, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, who are just referred to as Preston & Child, started a new series that is a spin-off from their Pendergast series: The Nora Kelly Series. I have posted on the first two novels and so take a closer look at the third and fourth one.
This series actually stars two characters: Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson. I think it should be named for both as both are treated equally in the series. We see their careers and lives 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 archaeologist 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 this series of novels, it varies as to which one of them starts things off and winds up calling in the other. Pendergast used to make appearances, but no longer does so, which is fine.
The third novel is Diablo Mesa. This time, Nora kicks things off. An Elon Musk-type tech billionaire wants Nora to head up an archaeological 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. After things go south for Nora at the Institute, she leaves and decides to get involved with 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.
We get a couple of storylines that collide. There is the mystery behind the dead body, but the Rosewell dig brings in a sinister government agency. It all comes to a head. In the end, there are some major changes in the lives of both characters, more so for Nora. Corrie may have found a possible love interest.
The fourth novel is Dead Mountain. The story takes its inspiration on a real event (the Dytalov Pass incident) that happened in the Soviet Union where a group of college students on a skiing expedition in the Ural mountains wind up dead under very mysterious circumstances, where they fled their tent during a blizzard and died of exposure. I’ve seen a few documentaries about this. The authors moved this basic story to New Mexico where a group of 9 students on a long distant wilderness hike in 2008 are found dead under mysterious circumstances during a blizzard as well. Worse is that three of the students are not found. Until now.
Corrie is called in to look into a dead body found by some drunk college students. When it seems it may be an archaeological find instead, she calls in Nora. Who then discovers two additional bodies: two of the missing college students. This reopens the dead case. In looking for the missing ninth body, the two stumble on several matters, including a military coverup and what caused the students to flee.
Corrie’s relationship with Sheriff Homer Watts is progressing. And she gets a new FBI mentor in Special Agent Sharp, who seems to have a somewhat mysterious past. We learn some of this and I hope we learn more.
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 I like it much more than the Gideon Cross series. I’m not sure what is next for this series. They’ve been working on a new trilogy in the Pendergast series that will wrap up soon. So maybe a new Nora Kelly volume will follow.
Small world. I have not read any of the books in this series, nor any of the related ones. However, I am familiar with the Dytalov Pass incident. It was probably on the Expedition Unknown TV series that I first about it, but do recall another documentary as well. Then in 2021 I read a couple of articles in National Geographic and the Adventure Journal where it appears to have been solved.
Also, it’s not just this series, but I haven’t read any of Preston’s fiction works. However, I highly recommend Lost City of the Monkey God if you want a real life archeology adventure turned medical mystery.