Book Review – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s “The Cabinet of Curiosities”
It’s an ordinary day in New York City when a demolition crew begins destroying an old building dating back to the 1800s.
The demolition process is suddenly halted when the work crew accidentally exposes a hidden chamber underneath the building. One of the workers climbs into the dusty and decayed world and discovers piles of human bones.
Over at the prestigious New York Museum of Natural History (the same museum from Relic), archaeologist Dr. Nora Kelly is fighting a losing battle with her boss, Roger C. Brisbane III, the Museum’s first Vice Director, over funding for her research projects. Devastated that her budget has been cut, Dr. Kelly returns to her office only to find FBI Special Agent Pendergast waiting for her arrival.
Special Agent Pendergast quickly recruits Dr. Kelly to travel with him to the construction site and help examine the human bones. At the ancient crime scene, Pendergast is able to distract the police officers and buy Dr. Kelly some time to enter and evaluate the hidden chamber. The police are curious as to why the FBI would be interested in a 130+ year old crime scene, but they accept his presence and allow Dr. Kelly to investigate the area.
Inside the chamber are the skeleton remains of not one or two but thirty-six people. Dr. Kelly discovers that all of the human skeletons are missing part of their spine. To add to the mystery, it appeared as if some of the backbones were precisely cut with surgical precision. The archaeologist notices an article of clothing, and she quickly removes a piece of paper attached to the clothes. Dr. Kelly pockets the evidence before the chief of police has Dr. Kelly and Pendergast removed from the crime scene.
The owner of the building being destroyed, Anthony Fairhaven, a wealthy property developer, doesn’t want an archaeological expedition to slow the process of his demolition and construction of a new structure. He has the medical examiner remove the human remains and give them a proper burial somewhere outside of the city. With the remains out of the way, he has the demolition team continue destroying the old building and thus destroying the old crime scene. Fairhaven has deep pockets and many high level connections, so the police allow the property developer to continue with his work.
Dr. Kelly examines the paper she removed from the crime scene and finds the name “Mary Greene” along with an age and address. The compelling part is that the information was written in the woman’s blood. Mary Greene knew that she was going to die in that building’s basement, and she didn’t want to be left as an anonymous victim of a serial killer.
Dr. Kelly’s boyfriend, journalist William Smithback, meets with her and Pendergast, and he takes the information and publishes a newspaper article about the ancient crime scene. He includes details about how the victims had part of their spines. Smithback intends on using the article to put pressure on the Museum and have them give Dr. Kelly a larger budget, but the article only infuriates Roger Brisbane.
To make matters worse, a copycat killer appears in New York City and victims are soon found with part of their spine removed. The city is held in the grip of a brutal and bloody killer inspired from another mass murderer. The new serial killer is nicknamed the Surgeon from the way he’s able to remove part of the victims’ spine in a skillful manner.
The Mayor is displeased with the rise of a serial killer based on Smithback’s article, so he has the police department keep a close eye on the mysterious Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. The police department assigns officer Patrick O’Shaughnessy, a veteran police officer descending from a proud family history of serving on the force, to be Pendergast’s liaison and assistant if need be. The police want O’Shaughnessy to do more spying on Pendergast than assisting, but after seeing the way that Pendergast treated him respectfully, O’Shaughnessy befriended and became Pendergast’s ally.
While investigating Mary Greene’s history, Dr. Kelly learns about the cabinets of curiosities that used to be commonplace throughout the city. Each cabinet was independently owned and treated as a makeshift museum, charging people a small admission fee and showcasing a number of unusual objects. Some of the items were fakes, others were incredibly rare, and still others spiked the visitors’ curiosity and brought them back again and again.
It turns out that the skeleton remains were located underneath the former site of John Shottum’s Cabinet. John Canaday Shottum was an old collector of rare and unusual artifacts. Shottum allowed a professor named Enoch Leng to reside in an apartment in the building housing his Cabinet. Leng was a most unusual person who was very well educated but also quite mysterious. It’s later revealed that Leng was the person who killed all of the people back in the 1890′s. Shottum became aware of the killings and Leng killed him and then burned down his Cabinet to cover his tracks.
Throughout the story, Pendergast becomes more and more convinced that the copycat serial killer in New York City, the “Surgeon,” is none other than Enoch Leng himself. He knows that Leng was working on discovering a way to prolong human life, and it’s believed that the secret resided in chemical components near the base of a person’s spine. The Surgeon’s killing method matches that of Leng’s, and somebody dressed from the 1890′s has been spotted near the locations of the murders.
Pendergast is also fearful of the truth behind Leng’s terrible secret. It’s critical to locate Leng’s secret laboratory to determine if Pendergast’s fears turn out to be true. The Special Agent stumbles too close to the truth when the Surgeon attacks and nearly kills him. It was only Pendergast’s quick thinking and reflexes that turned the Surgeon’s knife towards a non-vital part of Pendergast’s body.
Shaken by the attack but more determined than ever, the three of them continue following the clues and work their way towards Leng’s secret lair. One day O’Shaughnessy is kidnapped by the Surgeon and then Smithback is also captured. It’s a race against time as Pendergast and Dr. Kelly determine the approximate area of Leng’s laboratory.
Many secrets are revealed once Pendergast and Nora Kelly enter what is disguised as an old and boarded up home in a bad part of town. Both of them fall for a trap and are captured by the Surgeon. By this point O’Shaughnessy has been killed and Smithback is strapped to an operating table and about to become the latest victim.
Pendergast recognizes the house to be an exact duplicate of the mansion where he grew up back in Louisiana, complete with secret doors and hidden surprises. He escapes from the shackles and confronts the Surgeon who turns out to be none other than Anthony Fairhaven. Fairhaven almost kills Pendergast with a gunshot, but Pendergast escapes through a secret door and leads Fairhaven deeper into the hidden chamber in the basement.
Pendergast finds the weapons room and kneels on the floor, allowing Fairhaven to find him there. He asks Fairhaven for a quick death, but when seeing the wide variety of weapons in the room, Fairhaven decides to kill Pendergast in an alternate method. He picks up a few weapons before deciding on beheading the FBI special agent with a massive axe. Before he can strike, the poisons that were on all of the weapons attack and disfigure Fairhaven, turning him into a mutated creature. He’s almost completely blinded and unable to harm anything, forced to wander aimlessly around the basement. Pendergast would later contain the mutated Fairhaven in an underground chamber and seal him inside of it while still alive.
It turns out that Enoch Leng is really Pendergast’s great-grand uncle, a relative who left Louisiana for ultimately New York City. He moved into the city and painstakingly recreated his childhood home complete with the trap doors and secret passages. After changing his name and blending in with the city folk, Leng used his twisted mind to try to create a way to kill all of mankind. The problem for him was that he wasn’t going to live long enough to fulfil this goal. So Leng researched and experimented until he perfected a method of prolonging his own life. His method needed a living human being until some time in the 1930s when he found a synthetic process. Leng continued working with poisons and trying to find a way to destroy humanity until the U.S. government published its results with the hydrogen bomb tests in the 1950s. Seeing how humanity had the weapons to kill itself, Leng determined that his efforts were no longer needed. He stopped extending his life and quietly grew older while still living in his mansion.
Anthony Fairhaven’s story involved watching his older brother suffer from a rare medical condition that caused him to age at an incredibly rate. His brother died as a teenager of conditions that normally killed senior citizens. Devastated by his loss and extremely fearful of his own mortality, Fairhaven excelled in his family’s real estate business and donated time and money to health centers and museums. He had access to the New York Museum of Natural History’s archives and learned of Enoch Leng and Leng’s research into prolonging life.
Fairhaven ultimately tracked Leng’s location and confronted the now aged man, torturing him to death to reveal his information about virtual immortality. Enoch Leng took his secrets to the grave. However, Fairhaven knew the location of Leng’s secret laboratory (well, one of Leng’s secret laboratories) underneath Shotter’s Cabinet, but the modern location was built underneath old buildings. He used his real estate connections to purchase the property with the intent of building new structures for the community.
When the demolition crew discovered the human skeletons, Fairhaven went inside the chamber and removed Leng’s journal before Pendergast and Dr. Kelly arrived to examine the scene. Fairhaven then read Leng’s notes and tried to follow Leng’s process for longevity, though his attempts were amateurish compared to Enoch Leng.
Knowing Leng’s history and following his early steps, Fairhaven began capturing innocent people and using them as his human guinea pigs, killing them in a similar manner as Enough Leng did over one hundred years prior to that. Fairhaven watched Pendergast follow his investigation footsteps, and when the special agent got too close, Fairhaven struck. In the end Pendergast was able to use his knowledge of the house to beat Fairhaven at his own game.
So was The Cabinet of Curiosities a good book?
The Cabinet of Curiosities is a dark and chilling thriller, and it’s essentially another home run for the writing team of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The science fiction element of the quest for immortality was fantastic, and the killings in both older and modern times were gruesome and chilling. For a while I think I’ll keep my distance from people wearing bowler hats, especially if they walk with an umbrella cane.
The only thing that would have made The Cabinet of Curiosities better would have been more clues about Anthony Fairhaven’s background and intentions. I like the twist with him being the bad guy but it would have been better if we had a few more clues about the man and his twisted ways.
The Cabinet of Curiosities has a good start, it becomes a little bit sluggish in the middle, but the ending races at a blitzkrieg pace. Be warned — once you sink your teeth into this book there’s no turning back. Prepare yourself now for some sleepless nights as the story unwinds and you learn the deepest of secrets surrounding Pendergast and Enoch Leng.
Fans of Preston & Child’s FBI Special Agent Pendergast series will feel right at home with The Cabinet of Curiosities. Pendergast is just as quick thinking and cunning as in Relic, and his toughness is pushed to the limits when he finally confronts the Surgeon.
You’ll get the most out of The Cabinet of Curiosities if you at least read Relic before this one. Relic introduces the New York Museum of Natural History along with the Special Agent Pendergast character. There are also a few references to events that happened in Relic. There’s an occasional reference or two made to Reliquary, but it’s nothing significant.
In the meantime, I can’t wait until it’s time to read the next thrilling book by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child!
