Relic by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

c Waterloo Public Library 2008

If you have ever been to a major museum, you have probably wondered about what is going on behind all of those doors that are off-limits to the public. When you read the book Relic, your imagination will go into overdrive, since much of the story takes place behind the doors of the New York Museum of Natural History. As the story opens, someone--or something--has murdered two little boys in the museum's dark hallways. A major new exhibit is about to open, and much depends on its success, so the museum is thrown into a major crisis.

Margo is a young graduate student, finishing her dissertation as she works at the museum; her advisor, Dr. Frock, is an eccentric but brillant scientist whose theories about evolution are controversial. He is confined to a wheelchair due to a childhood illness. Margo has made friends with a young journalist, Bill Smithback, who is writing a book about the museum, but becoming increasingly frustrated by efforts to censure his work. She also becomes acquainted with Moriarty, another museum employee who needs her help to document some plants in his exhibit. These people--plus a local cop, Lieutenant D'Agosta, and an FBI agent named Pendergast, play key roles in the story.

Slowly, Margo, Bill and Dr. Frock discover that there is a connection between the murders--which continue--and the new exhibit, which contains items gathered on a fateful trip by museum scientists to the Amazon jungle many years earlier. No one from that group survived, by the way, but they did manage to send several large crates back to the museum. However, there is a group of top administrators who are determined to cover up any hint of danger and see the grand opening of the exhibit proceed as planned--in spite of growing concern by the police and Agent Pendergast.
As it turns out, there is reason to be concerned.

Relic is a creepy, suspenseful, read with lots of interesting characters, dialogue and description. The identity of the "thing" takes several twists and turns as the plot unravels and we discover what happened to the doomed team to the Amazon by reading the journal of the lead scientist, Whittlesey.

You can find Relic in the Adult Fiction area. You can also find a sequel--Reliquary. When I did some digging, I found that the authors have a website, at http://www.prestonchild.com/books/relic/.

I also found out that there are seven novels featuring Agent Pendergast, with an eighth on the way, according to Michael Alderete's weblog, http://aldoblog.com/2007/05/relic-by-douglas-preston-lincoln-child/.