Not one of the better books from this team. Agent Pendergast takes a backseat to Corrie Swanson (from Still Life With Crows), his protege, and a student at John Jay College, majoring in criminology. She has to write a thesis and has stumbled on a series of grizzly bear maulings of miners in a Colorado mining camp, now turned into one of the priciest ski resorts in the country. At the same time, someone is targeting the homes and lives of these one-percenters, burning their houses down with the occupants bound and still alive inside. There's also a tie to Oscar Wilde and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the form of a lost Sherlock Holmes story that Pendergast intuits will be the key to solving the mystery of the bear maulings. It all adds up to a surprisingly dull mystery, with some of the worst characterizations I've read in a Preston/Child novel. Corrie Swanson, our protagonist, is particularly poorly-written and continually does dumb things, merely because the story requires her to. The mystery of who the serial arsonist is could be solved by a third grader. And why the writers felt the need to fictionalize Aspen as "Roaring Fork," is beyond me. Very disappointing novel, possibly the worst in the entire Pendergast series.

Sheesh. I have long been a fan of Pendergast. I mean, I think I may have a little crush on him- so I'm willing to suspend disbelief (he's a bit unreal) and put up with a bit of nonsense (it's genre thriller, nothing literary at all). But. This book utterly failed to live up to my expectations. I read it in two sittings and felt as it focused more on the protege than on Pendergast. The horror felt flat and the who-done-it aspect was not there. It pains me to think that this series may be on the decline, after 13 books - most of which I've enjoyed thoroughly even when it got all woo-woo with the mystical traditions and all that.Anyway, don't waste your time buying this. Borrow it from the library- the money would be better spent on a few five dollar milk shakes.

3.5 A new Pendergast is a cause for celebrations, he is such a strange and unique character with such an intriguing back story. In this one his back story takes a back seat, so to say, and his protege Corrie, takes a much more active role. An old silver mining town, that has now become a very expensive skiing enclave for the very wealthy. An old cemetery, old bones and a very old story Oscar Wilde told Conan Doyle, in the late 1800's when they found themselves in the same place. Now adding Wilde and Doyle certainly made this an even better story, especially when a hunt ensues for a missing Sherlock Holmes story. So the past and the present meet, with a mystery that includes arson, those old bones and present day ancestors with much to hide.My only little reservation is that I did not really like Corrie very much in this one. Not the mystery or the investigation part, but in the personality department. Won;t say more on that front. you will have to read this and see what you think. Anyway it was good after the last several books to have Pendergast again doing what he does so well, though I have to admit I did miss Constance.