Search - Brimstone

Very good book. Although, the epilogue and excerpt from the next book, Dance of Death, left me without closure. I will definitely have to order the next book in the series to see what happens.

This was the book that introduced me to the series and got me interested in reading the others. The plot is a littly random in some points, but overall it's very enjoyable and the rest of the series is just as good. Enjoy!

I love Agent Pendergast!!! He is a very unique character with a dry sense of humor, loves the finer things in life, has intense feelings (usually hidden by himself) and an unmatched level of knowledge. This is the first in a trilogy that involves his brother. We find out more about Agent Pendergast and his family from this trilogy. I would highly recommend you read all three books. Don't let the covers scare you as it really is not satanistic. However, you probably need to start from the beginning of the Pendergast series (Relic) to really get to know Pendergast because he is definitely developed throughout the series.

I was so looking forward to reading Brimstone by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child but I was so totally disappointed when I finished.

I have to admit that I read the books out of order, probably a bad idea. The first one I ever read was Still Life With Crows and, while I enjoyed it and liked the Pendergast character, there were a couple of sections that confused me. There were references to people I didn't know and there were a mysterious pair of eyes, one hazel, one blue. At least, I think the eyes were in that book. I didn't plan on reading any more in the series but then I came across Cabinet of Curiosities and I was totally hooked. At that point, I realized I ought to go back and read the first two and I enjoyed them as well.

By then, Brimstone and Dance of Death were out in hardcover and/or paperback. I was eager to get to them, looking forward to this confrontation between Aloysius Pendergast and his mad brother Diogenes. I thought I'd be introduced to the brother in this book but there were just a couple of references to him and that was my first disappointment.

The next one was that a mysterious character appeared, Constance Green, and she didn't make any sense to me. I get it that she was in the Harlem mansion from the Cabinet book and that she was in hiding throughout the story. I get it that experiments were done on her and that she is actually very much older than she looks (she appears 19 or 20). If I remember correctly, Pendergast's great grandfather (or some relative) was the one performing life prolonging experiments on her and then he died. Now Pendergast is taking care of her, slowly easing her into the 21st century by reading to her from newspapers. You'd think she was a very fragile being but no, Pendergast also has her research the most hideous topics like soul snatching by the Devil and what have you. I kept getting this feeling of huh? and I don't like that feeling.

The book began well with the mysterious murders of two men in New York--with the stink of brimstone in the air and the burned out shells of bodies left behind, it sure seemed the work of Satan. Enter Pendergast--who has a special interest in serial killings--and Vinnie D'Agosta, now a trivial sergeant from eastern Long Island. This was another huh? section. Apparently D'Agosta returned from the NYC police force, dragged his unwilling wife and son to Canada, went bankrupt writing books and came crawling back sans family. Okay, I can't see a city cop leaving New York, sorry.

Another WTF moment: where was obnoxious reporter Bill Smithback of the New York Post? Apparently he and his old rival Bryce Harriman swapped jobs? Now Smithback is on his honeymoon and Harriman is struggling in Smithback's old job. Why? As far as I can tell, the entire Harriman/Buck-the-preacher segment was totally irrelevant to the story. It could have been left out and I think the story would have moved a lot faster for me.

Once Pendergast and D'Agosta went to Italy I began to get bored and impatient. I didn't like Count Fosco--he was an admittedly purloined character taken to honor the author who came up with detective stories. Really? Okay...yawn. I couldn't stand Count Fosco, didn't find him really believeable as a psychopathic villain. And the authors also purloined the story from Edgar Allan Poe: The Cask of Amontillado. Give me a break. I thought that story worked better for Dark Shadows than it did for this book.

But lots of people loved this book and I didn't. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I wanted to see the battle between Pendergast and his brother begin. Where is Diogenes and what exactly is this perfect heinous crime he's planning? So I have to wait for Dance of Death to meet the guy? Although...

whose hazel and blue eyes peeked into that bricked up room? Well...I could have skipped this book and went right to the next one as far as I'm concerned.

I love Preston and Child as authors. I wish they could crank out one a year! Special Agent Pendergast is so odd, yet appealing.

Nice polt twists. Good storyline, and quite engrossing

FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast investigates a gruesome crime, which leads him to look into the past. Thirty years prio four men conjured smoething unspeakable. Entertaining and thrilling.

Great book, you can count on Preston and Child

High tension thriller/mystery with FBI agent Pendergast and Vincent d'Agosta of the police. People dying horribly in locked rooms. Too many murder suspects to count, and then the suspects start dying, too . . .

Science & the supernatural all in one good book.

Now I remember why I abandoned the series for a time. I let my pleasant experience with the The Dark Wheel and my fond memories of The Relic, Reliquary and the The Cabinet of Curiosities blur my vision and I checked this out of the library.

I'll stand by my earlier assessment - its 21st century pulp. But this outing descends to a bad level (not say Matthew Reilly level, but bad). The novel is too bloated for the pay off it delivers, and much of the secondary plot line involving Harriman, Capt. Hayward and Rev. Buck could have been eliminated entirely to good effect.

Anyway, I lightheartedly hope the next book will be better, but I think I'll read other things first before I get it out of the library.

Excellent book!!! Scary, suspenseful. I love the characters in these books.

"Brimstone" comes after "Still Life With Crows." Pendergast and D'Agosta team up once again. This time, a series of spontaneous human combustions sends the pair to Italy.

FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, a wealthy, refined yet ruthless descendant of Holmes who's very much his own character. Pendergast, as well as other Preston and Child semiregulars, notably rough-hewn former NYPD cop Vincent D'Agosta, Watson to Pendergast's Sherlock, tread nearly every page of this vastly imagined, relentlessly enjoyable thriller. The body of a notorious art critic is found in his Hamptons, L.I., mansion, wholly burned, with a cloven hoofprint nearby: the devil's work? Book 1 of a Trilogy

This was a creepy/fun book - great character in Pendergast...he's awesome!

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"A TERRIFIC THRILL RIDE."
-San Jose Mercury News


A body is found in the attic of a fabulous Long Island estate.

There is a claw print scorched into the wall, and the stench of sulfur chokes the air.

When FBI Special Agent Pendergast investigates the gruesome find, he discovers that thirty years ago men conjured something unspeakable.

Has the devil come to claim his due?

BRIMSTONE

SOME THINGS CAN'T BE UNDONE.

Another nail-biting Pendergast novel. I loved it.