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Author | Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Series | Aloysius Pendergast |
Genre | Thriller |
Publisher | Tor Books |
Publication date | 1997 |
Media type | Paperback |
Pages | 480 |
ISBN | 0-8125-4283-5 |
OCLC | 39285732 |
Preceded by | Relic |
Followed by | The Cabinet of Curiosities |
Reliquary is the 1997 New York Times best-selling sequel to Relic , by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The legacy of the blood-maddened Mbwun lives on in Reliquary, but the focus is shifted from the original museum setting to the tunnels beneath the streets of New York City. The book is the second in the Special Agent Pendergast series. [1]
The story picks up where the epilogue of Relic left off. Two headless skeletons are found in the Humboldt Kill. When further decapitated bodies follow, there is suspicion of a second Mbwun monster. Major characters from the original book team up with new ones to solve the puzzle. The mystery soon leads underground to the Mole people, and even deeper towards enigmatic beings called the Wrinklers. In the end, it is revealed that the Wrinklers are led by Frock, who has refined a modified version of the Mbwun plant, created by Kawakita to regain the use of his legs. Kawakita also gave the drug to the people who were to become the Wrinklers, later made into his tribe by Frock. After going underground, the group kills them with an explosion, vitamin D infused water and a flood.
Lieutenant D’Agosta is with some divers searching for a brick of heroin that was tossed over a bridge into the Humboldt Kill, aka the Cloaca Maxima. This is an area of the Harlem river where lots of human waste and other refuse piles up, making the water murky and disgusting. Divers find headless corpses, along with the heroin, and D’Agosta tells them to get back in and find the skulls.
D’Agosta is back to Lieutenant due to office politics. The mayor recommended him for Captain, but then wasn’t reelected, so someone else got the Captaincy. Meanwhile, Smithback talked with Mephisto, the underground king of NY, who mentioned that some of his people have been killed. Margo and Dr. Frock are trying to figure out how a weirdly-boned corpse got that way.
A New York young man proposes to his girlfriend Tanya at Belvedere Castle, but when he goes into the Men’s room to urinate, something appears. A few minutes later, his girlfriend goes into the restroom and screams. Seems like the beast killed him.
Pendergast, posing as a smelly homeless man, appears in the homicide office to visit with D’Agosta. He is going to help out on the case, in a semi-official capacity. He visits the underground, and is sure that there are several killers, not a single killer as the top police brass believes. Top brass is Chief Horlocker and Captain Waxie, both incompetent and arrogant. And D’Agosta is being helped by a smart young sergeant named Laura Hayward.
The second corpse (the one with the deformities) is identified as Greg Kawakita, because of spinal surgery that he had which left some plates in the X-rays of his corpse.
Pendergast and D’Agosta take a trip through the underground and meet Mephisto to discuss the murders.
Mrs. Wisher, the wealthy socialite mother of a young woman who disappeared, makes a deal with Smithback for his exclusive coverage of her Take Back the City initiative. Hayward meets Pendergast at his apartment in the Dakota.
Margo is figuring out what Kawakita was working on. Pendergast has outfitted himself for a trip to the Devil’s Attic. He starts from a locked room in the NYC Library, going down through a trapdoor.
The killers attack a subway car, after disabling tracks between almost 100 city blocks. About 7 people are killed: some have their throats cut, some have their heads removed. D’Agosta was able to interview a survivor of the attacks and get her description of them (in Spanish). Captain Horlocker is ordering police down into the tunnels to confront the suspected killers in their underground lair.
Pendergast found some strange stuff, including a throne and hut built from human skulls, in the Astor tunnels. There’s a “king,” and we don’t know who it is yet. There’s a big push now to flood the tunnels at midnight. In support of this, the police are going to roust all the homeless who live down there. Meanwhile, there’s a huge Take Back the City event going on in Central Park, which is probably going to hinder the police in their effort to roust the homeless.
The order comes down to dump 100 million gallons of water through the reservoir and into the tunnels, then out to the Hudson river and the sea. Problem is, Margo just realized the reservoir is full of the lily pads that carry the virus. And, if they get to the ocean, there are microorganisms that the virus affects.
Big battle ensues between marchers and homeless, after police use gas in the tunnels, driving hundreds of the underground homeless to the surface.
Waxie and Duffy the engineer head down to manually turn off valves to stop water from entering the tunnels. Smithback follows them. He watches Waxie and a couple of cops get killed by Wrinklers, then he flees into a tunnel heading down. D’Agosta, Mephisto, and AP arm themselves from the FBI armory, and head into the tunnels to blow up the exits into the river. Margo catches up with them, when she realizes that Vitamin D will kill the Wrinklers. She’s armed with 3 liters of Vitamin D solution. A SEAL team also heads to tunnels to blow them up from the outside. The dive cop from the beginning of the book is alone in the dive house when they come, so he is guiding them to tunnels, through the waste treatment waters.
Smithback meets up with Duffy in the tunnel heading down. As they flee, Duffy gets killed. Smithback runs blindly through the tunnels. He meets up with the others at the Bottleneck. They place some charges. The SEAL team is doing the same thing near the treatment plant.
The SEAL team killed all except one guy who is partnered with Snow. Pendergast and his group are captured and brought to the Crystal Pavilion, where the creatures hold their ceremonies. Dr. Frock is revealed to be the leader of the creatures. Pieces of his wheelchair are the metal objects on display. The virus cured his paralysis.
Snow comes into the Pavilion and uses weapons and flares to divert the Wrinklers. Then, Mephisto detonates an anti-personnel mine, killing himself and a bunch of the creatures. As the group is fleeing, Margo used her Vitamin D bottles on the creatures, killing a bunch and driving the rest back.
Many major characters from Relic return:
New Characters:
Relic is a 1995 novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and the first in the Special Agent Pendergast series. As a horror novel and techno-thriller, it comments on the possibilities inherent in genetic manipulation, and is critical of museums and their role both in society and in the scientific community. It is the basis of the film The Relic (1997).
Lincoln Child is an American author of techno-thriller and horror novels. Though he is most well known for his collaborations with Douglas Preston, he has also written eight solo novels, including the Jeremy Logan series. Over twenty of the collaborative novels and most of his solo novels have become New York Times bestsellers, some reaching the #1 position. Child and Preston's first novel together, Relic, was adapted into a feature film. Their books are notable for their thorough research and scientific accuracy.
Dark Days is an American documentary film directed, produced, and photographed by the English documentarian Marc Singer that was completed and released in 2000. Shot during the mid-1990s, it follows a group of people who lived in the Freedom Tunnel section of the Amtrak system at the time. DJ Shadow created new music for the documentary and also let Singer use some of his preexisting songs.
C.H.U.D. is a 1984 American science fiction horror film directed by Douglas Cheek, produced by Andrew Bonime, and starring John Heard, Daniel Stern, and Christopher Curry in his film debut. The plot concerns a New York City police officer and a homeless shelter manager who team up to investigate a series of disappearances, and discover that the missing people have been killed by humanoid monsters that live in the sewers.
Brimstone is a thriller novel written by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and published on August 3, 2004, by Warner Books. This is the fifth installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series and the first novel in the Diogenes trilogy that also includes Dance of Death (2005) and The Book of the Dead (2006).
The Cabinet of Curiosities is a thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, released on June 3, 2002 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the third installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series.
Douglas Jerome Preston is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child, he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Split Second is a 1992 science fiction action horror film directed by Tony Maylam and Ian Sharp, and written by Gary Scott Thompson. A co-production between the United States and the United Kingdom, the film stars Rutger Hauer as a burnt-out police detective obsessively hunting down the mysterious serial killer who killed his partner several years prior. The film also features Kim Cattrall, Alastair Neil Duncan, Pete Postlethwaite, Ian Dury, and Alun Armstrong.
The Relic is a 1997 American monster-horror film directed by Peter Hyams and based on the best-selling 1995 novel Relic by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The film stars Penelope Ann Miller, Tom Sizemore, Linda Hunt, and James Whitmore. In the film, a detective and a biologist try to defeat a South American lizard-like monster which is on a killing spree in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
The Book of the Dead is a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child published on July 1, 2007, by Warner Books. This is the seventh book in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Also, it is the third and final installment to the trilogy concentrating on Pendergast and his relationship with Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta in their pursuit to stop Pendergast's brother, Diogenes.
Dance of Death is a novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, published on June 2, 2005, by Warner Books. This is the sixth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series. Also, this novel is the second book in the Diogenes trilogy: the first book is Brimstone, released in 2004, and the last book is The Book of the Dead, released in 2006.
Still Life with Crows is a thriller novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, released on July 1, 2003 by Grand Central Publishing. It is the fourth novel to feature FBI Special Agent Pendergast as protagonist.
Abominable is a 2006 American monster film, directed and written by Ryan Schifrin. Starring Matt McCoy, Jeffrey Combs, Lance Henriksen, Rex Linn, Dee Wallace, Phil Morris, Paul Gleason and Haley Joel. The film follows paraplegic widower Preston Rogers (McCoy) as he moves back into the remote cabin where he and his now-deceased wife once lived. Preston quickly realizes that a sadistic Sasquatch is stalking the woods around the cabin, but nobody believes him.
The Wheel of Darkness is a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child released on August 28, 2007 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the eighth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series. It entered The New York Times Best Seller list at number two on September 16, 2007, and remained on the list for five weeks.
Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast is a fictional character appearing in novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. He first appeared as a supporting character in their first novel, Relic (1995), and in its 1997 sequel Reliquary, before assuming the protagonist's role in the 2002 novel The Cabinet of Curiosities.
Abominations is a three-issue Marvel Comics limited series created by Ivan Velez Jr (writer), Angel Medina (penciller) and Brad Vancata (inker). The series ran from December 1996 to February 1997. It was a follow-up tale from the Incredible Hulk storylines "Ghosts of the Past" and "Future Imperfect".
Cemetery Dance is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child released on May 12, 2009 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the ninth installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series. During production, it was known by the pre-release title Revenant. The preceding novel is The Wheel of Darkness.
Blood Beach is a 1981 American horror film written and directed by Jeffrey Bloom and starring David Huffman, John Saxon, and Burt Young. The premise, conceived by Steven Nalevansky, involves a creature lurking beneath the sand of Santa Monica Beach that attacks locals and vacationers. The film's tagline is: "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water—you can't get to it."
Cold Vengeance is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It was released on August 2, 2011 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the eleventh installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series and also the second novel in the Helen trilogy. The preceding novel is Fever Dream.
Crimson Shore is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The book was released on November 10, 2015, by Grand Central Publishing. This is the fifteenth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series.