Relic (Special Agent Pendergast Series #1) Book

"Every sixty to seventy million years or so, life starts getting very well adapted to its environment. Too well adapted, perhaps. There is a population explosion of the successful life forms. Then, suddenly a new species appears out of the blue. It is almost always a predatory creature, a killing machine. It tears through the host population, killing, feeding, multiplying. Slowly at first, then ever faster."



The Amazon has always been an attractive source for exploration for the scientific community. There are so many unknown critters, bugs, fauna, and lost tribes that scientists, regardless of what particular field they are specializing in, will find opportunities to make their career, if they are willing to risk their lives in the deep, dark jungles of Brazil.

Even if they survive the poisonous snakes, the flesh eating diseases, and the hostile tribes, there are things, monstrous things, that might find them tasty. Dr. Julian Whittlesey is more than a little annoyed when Crocker disappears into the jungle because he is holding up the expedition, but Crocker, as it turns out, has a very good reason for being missing.

"A cloud of fat flies roared and swarmed about the open rib cage. Whittlesey noticed that a severed left arm was lashed to the tree trunk with a fibrous rope, the palm sliced open. A number of spent cartridge casings lay around the body. Then he saw the head. It lay face up under the corpse's armit, the back of the skull torn away, the cloudy eyes staring upward, the cheeks bulging.

Whittlesey had found Crocker."

Whittlesey is going to discover that he is leaving the Amazonian jungle one damn day too late.

The crates of specimens from the expedition make their way back to the museum in New York, but the members of the expedition join the ranks of the many missing explorers and scientists who have disappeared in the mountains, the rivers, the jungles, and the deserts of the world.

Something has followed the crates back to the United States.

When savagely mutilated bodies start showing up in the museum basement, the police and the FBI soon find themselves in a desperate battle with a beast that defies categorization. When a claw is recovered from the body of a victim, the analysis of the DNA is more baffling than helpful. "The analysis of the claw creates a general caricature of the creature in the question, comprising a primary mix of primate, reptile, and human genes; a nocturnal nature; a strong sense of smell; a quadruped build; a maximum speed of 60-70 KPH; and thick muscle definition and bone structure. Frock describes this hypothetical combination as having the strength of a grizzly bear, the speed of a greyhound, and the intelligence of a human being - the ultimate predator."

Did I say baffling? I meant terrifying!

The team of museum staff, Detective Vincent D'Agosta and FBI special agent Aloysius X. L. Pendergast, are in a desperate race to discover what exactly they are chasing in the bowels of the museum, while at the same time trying to convince the powers that be that the gala event to raise funds for the museum will just be providing a buffet for the monster. Further research ties this creature to the Kothoga tribe who worshiped a lizard god called Mbwun--HE WHO WALKS ON ALL FOURS. It is addicted to a plant that produces the same hormones as the hypothalamus in the human brain.

Could this be the creature in the bowels of the museum? Could this explain the busted skulls and slashed brains of the victims?

The computer programming that was so intrical in determining the type of creature will seem antiquated to many readers now, but since I was using computers in that era, for me it was just a bit of nostalgia. It does not detract from the plot, but it certainly places the situation in historical context. The details about the workings of the museum were also fascinating. One of the authors, Douglas Preston, worked in the American Museum of Natural History in New York for seven years so that experience lends so much authenticity to not only the culture of the museum, but also the characters. Preston also wrote a book called Dinosaurs in the Attic about his time spent working in a museum.

Wouldn't it be great to work in a museum?


The movie stars Tom Sizemore and Penelope Ann Miller.

There was a movie made of the same name in 1997. It follows the book pretty well, but interesting enough, one of the main key characters in the book is completely erased from the script. Special Agent Pendergast, whose character continues to be developed by the writing team in fifteen more books after Relic, is sliced from the movie storyline. The writers on the movie script expand the role of Detective D'Agosta and keep things simple by eliminating the odd, but very interesting character of Pendergast. I read this book probably fifteen years ago and recently decided that I wanted to read more of the series because I remembered really enjoying this one. It holds up well after all these years, and now I've reopened the gateway to read the rest of the series. Memory rebooted. Onward to Reliquary.

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