Plot summary
Relic, a Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child thriller that introduces FBI Special Agent Pendergast
Just days before a massive exhibition opens at the popular New York Museum of Natural History, visitors are being savagely murdered in the museum’s dark hallways and secret rooms. Autopsies indicate that the killer cannot be human…
But the museum’s directors plan to go ahead with a big bash to celebrate the new exhibition, in spite of the murders.
Museum researcher Margo Green must find out who–or what–is doing the killing. But can she do it in time to stop the massacre?
About the Authors
Did it seem like Relic was written by someone with some inside knowledge of the American Museum of Natural History? Well, it was! Long before Relic, Douglas Preston worked at the museum for eight years as an editor, writer, and manager of publications. Lincoln Child edited one of the nonfiction books that Preston wrote and the two later began a collaboration that produced countless bestsellers including the popular series spawned by Relic. It was Child’s idea, during a midnight tour of the museum in 1988, who sowed the seed that led to the American Museum of Natural History as the setting for the thriller.
What I loved about Relic
I typically prefer historical fiction over any other genre. That said, I enjoyed this thriller. Exotic relics from an Amazon river basin tribe are shipped to the fictionalized version of the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. One of those objects is to be featured in an upcoming exhibition. The only problem is that dead bodies keep popping up all over the museum, murdered by an unknown, but intensely violent, killer. Lieutenant D’Agosta, with the help of FBI agent Pendergast and museum researcher, Margo, team up to locate and try to stop the beast. I rooted for the survival of each one of those characters, but I’ll admit, I had a soft spot for the reporter Smithback. As for the murderous beast, I know it cannot be real, but yet Preston & Child managed to convince me that a Homo Gekkopiens might just be possible. After reading Relic, a stroll through the American Museum of Natural History’s Hall of Reptiles was all that much scarier!
Novel activities to pair with reading Relic
The book is set in the fictional “New York” Museum of Natural History. Therefore, the obvious novel activity is to visit the source of literary inspiration – the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. However, really any great museum of natural history with exhibits on reptiles, evolution, Amazonian people and dinosaurs would be worth paring up with Relic. In fact, while the book is set in New York, the movie version takes place at the Chicago Museum of Natural History. (Rumor has it that the NY museum would not allow them to film the movie there because the book portrays the museum administrators in, let’s just say, a rather undesirable light. Fodor’s put together this list of top museums of natural history around the world that you might find useful in planning your visit after you read Relic.
Related Reading
If you love visiting museums, you will enjoy these book set in a museum.
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