Two Graves - Douglas Preston

After his wife, Helen, is brazenly abducted before his eyes, Special Agent Pendergast furiously pursues the kidnappers, chasing them across the country and into Mexico. But then, things go terribly, tragically wrong; the kidnappers escape; and a shattered Pendergast retreats to his New York apartment and shuts out the world.But when a string of bizarre murders erupts across several Manhattan hotels-perpetrated by a boy who seems to have an almost psychic ability to elude capture-NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta asks his friend Pendergast for help. Reluctant at first, Pendergast soon discovers that the killings are a message from his wife's kidnappers. But why a message? And what does it mean?When the kidnappers strike again at those closest to Pendergast, the FBI agent, filled anew with vengeful fury, sets out to track down and destroy those responsible. His journey takes him deep into the trackless forests of South America, where he ultimately finds himself face to face with an old evil that-rather than having been eradicated-is stirring anew... and with potentially world-altering consequences.Confucius once said: "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves." Pendergast is about to learn the hard way just how true those words still ring.

Published: 2012-12-11 (Grand Central Publishing)

ISBN: 9780446554992

Language: English

Format: Hardcover, 484 pages

Goodreads' rating: -

Genres

Mystery Thriller Fiction Suspense

Reviews

Benoite rated it

How do Preston and Child come up with these plots? I don't usually like third person narration which goes back and forth between different characters and situations, but each of these was so exciting that this one worked for me. A bit too much fighting/battling near the end for my taste, but loved the twists and turns.

Georgianne rated it

When the focus of the series was on how this impossible character Pendergast figures out perfectly good scientific explanations for seemingly "supernatural" phenomena, like "zombies" and museum monsters, and the reasons for John James Audubon's descent into madness at the end of his life (a weird symptom of a weird bird flu),the books were fun. But this one has to resort to evil Nazis in Brazil making a race of ubermensch to form the basis of a new army to conquer the world. And of course, the uber-Nazi is Pendergast's son. By his wife, who he thought was killed by a lion in Africa a dozen years before. But she wasn't; she was just hiding from the Nazi's who manipulated her genes to create the next generation of ......oh, the hell with it. Pendergast of course is whipped and beaten and made to dig his own grave while shackled leg and arm, yet he bounces back immediately to choke the evil Nazi doctor with the shackles, steal his machine gun, kill the Nazi soldiers, and escape by cutting though his chains with an acetylene torch--even though we just have seen him get beaten to a pulp. And, of course, he has previously been shot several times, and bounced back in no time at all. This series could not get any sillier. A recorded book, read very nicely by Rene Auberjunois, who has read several others in the series.

Katerina rated it

Wow. Absolutely wow. The only downside is they did the Brimstone thing again. In the book Brimstone, half of the book is about Pendergast and D'Agosta, and the other half about a rally in New York. In Two Graves it divides into three separate plots, Pendergast, Corrie Swanson, and Dr. Felder (he's the court appointed psychiatrist to Constance Greene.) Pendergast does not have a sidekick in this book, he comes into orbit with D'Agosta, Constance, Corrie and Viola briefly. The Dr. Felder plot does merge with the novel but only in the last chapter, the Corrie Swanson bit does not.The book is wonderfully riveting. I could not put it down. It picked up right where Cold Vengeance left off as if Two Graves was simply the 2nd half of a single novel. I have greatly enjoyed the Helen Esterhazy trilogy more than the Diogenes, these three books being more seamless than the Diogenes trilogy. I have read all the Pendergast novels and this is tying at 3rd place on my list of favorites.Please keep writing, need more Pendergast!