Book Review – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child’s “Relic”

Let’s face it, museums can be large and intimidating places.

Museums can also be a little bit scary, too, depending how you look at them.  From large spaces to lifelike animal exhibits to somewhat dreadful items such as bones and spiders, an ordinary trip to a museum could actually be a stressful experience.  Throw in the long shadows, loud air conditioning units, and the countless number of security cameras covering the exhibits, and there you go.  It’s almost like we’re supposed to be afraid of the exhibits inside a museum.

And then there are the tourists.  You know, those pesky people who are often loud, annoying, and they always find a way to stand in the way of your photos.  Compared to them, dealing with a mysterious beast that supposedly shreds people and snacks on part of their brains is like a walk in a park.

What’s that?  A museum beast that preys on innocent people?

That’s exactly the premise in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s thrilling novel, Relic.

Relic begins with a disastrous expedition deep into the Brazilian rain forest.  The expedition, sponsored by the prestigious New York Museum of Natural History (also known as simply, The Museum), was to seek out an unknown tribe of people thought to have been extinct.  We don’t learn much about the expedition to find the lost Kothoga tribe, but it ends with the presumed deaths of several scientists.

About five years later, almost all traces of the Brazilian expedition are locked away in secure areas.  The New York Museum of Natural History is focusing on a new exhibition dealing with superstition.  The new Superstition exhibition is big and expected to draw heavy crowds of New York’s elite class when it premiers at the end of the week.

For botany graduate student Margo Green, it’s just another day of work at the museum as she works on her research project.  When she shows up for work on Monday morning, Margo, and the rest of the museum’s staff, is shocked by the heavy police presence.  It turns out that two young boys were brutally murdered in the museum’s basement area the previous night.  Not only were they murdered, but they were each decapitated with parts of their brains missing.  The NYPD jumps into action and begins questioning all workers who had contact with that section of the museum.

NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta leads the investigation.  Under request of the Museum’s director, D’Agosta allows for parts of the museum to remain open for both workers and visitors during the murder investigation.

And then a second murder occurs the following night.  A security guard is discovered to have been butchered in one of the museum’s stairwells.  Blood covers the walls and stairs.  Along with the two boys, the security guard also has part of his brain missing.  Not only is the serial killer incredibly dangerous, but he or she may also be a bit cannibalistic.

The NYPD is puzzled.  The Museum’s workers are terrified, many of them calling out “sick” or taking unexpected vacation time.  The tourists are few and far between.  Rumors of a “museum beast” quickly circulate amongst the staff, most of them not daring to venture around the building’s basement (and the super scary sub-basement) or past the NYPD’s set curfew.

Along comes FBI Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI’s New Orleans office.  Pendergast is a highly intelligent and somewhat daring field agent who takes over the murder investigation from Lieutenant D’Agosta.  It turns out that Special Agent Pendergast had been investigating very similar (and unsolved) murders down in New Orleans.  Once he arrives at the Museum, Perdergast quickly realizes that he’s facing the same threat that struck New Orleans a few years ago.  At least this time he has a fresh trail to hunt and capture the serial killer.

Just after the discovery of the first murder, William Smithback, Jr., a journalist writing a book about the Superstition exhibition for the Museum, does a little digging into the murders.  He shares his information with Margo Green in an attempt to earn her appreciation, and hopefully a date.  She rejects his advances but her curiosity is peaked when she learns a few details not yet released by the police department.  Margo takes this information to Dr. Frock, her mentor at the Museum, and they begin doing their own research into part of the Superstition exhibition.

Perhaps there’s more to an exhibit in Superstition than meets the eye.  Maybe there really is some kind of beast roaming the hallways and killing museum guests and workers at will.

The week slowly progresses towards the grand opening of the Superstition exhibition.  FBI Special Agent Pendergast is fearful of the safety of the visitors and tries to postpone the grand opening of the exhibition.  The Museum’s director refuses to cooperate, and Pendergast finds himself replaced by Agent Coffey of the FBI’s New York City office.  Coffey assumes command of the murder investigation and allows the exhibition to open as planned.

By the time of the exhibition’s opening, Margo Green, Dr. Frock and Smithback are convinced that the serial killer isn’t human.  It’s some kind of a highly intelligent and very aggressive reptile-like creature.  The creature is believed to hunt primarily at night or in dark areas, and apparently it travels throughout the basement sections of the Museum.  If the evidence is true, then the crowds expected at the expedition’s opening will be a killing field for the creature.

Sure enough, chaos ensues during the opening of the Superstition exhibition.  Another dead body is discovered in the exhibition and the people flee from there in a panic rush.  In the computer control room, a police officer is spooked by some strange sounds and accidentally fires his shotgun into one of the computers.  The computer is knocked out along with the power to the museum.  The security gates quickly close, trapping about forty people including the Mayor of New York City along with Lieutenant D’Agosta inside of the museum.  The lights also fail, plunging the museum into total darkness.

While this was taking place, Special Agent Pendergast is in the basement acting on a hunch and trying to hunt the creature.  He spots it and fires a shot, but his bullet just ricochets off the creature’s thick skull bone.  The creature escapes further into the Museum’s basement.

Several people are killed when the Museum goes into lock-down mode.  It’s up to Lieutenant D’Agosta with the assistance of Smithback to lead their fellow survivors to safety.  As they enter the stairwell the creature attacks, killing a few more people.  The group of survivors is able to get around the creature and enter the stairwell.  D’Agosta leads most of them down to the basement and then the sub-basement as they desperately search for an escape route.

It’s a race against time as the creature moves throughout the museum and threatens to kill everybody still alive.  It moves from the basement to the upper floors, killing scientists and even wiping out an entire squad of SWAT police officers.  The creature’s surprising speed and its incredibly tough body catch the soldiers off guard, rendering their weapons useless.

Margo Green and Dr. Frock meet up with Pendergast, and the three of them ultimately set a trap for the creature.  The creature foiled their previous trap, outwitting the FBI Special Agent and the two scientists in a baffling manner.  Despite looking hideous and having retractable claws, the creature’s exceptional intelligence seems awfully . . . human.

The later trap works and the creature is ultimately killed.  Special Agent Pendergast, Margo Green, Dr. Frock, Smithback, and the Mayor of New York City all survive the harrowing incident.

The end of Relic ties together the events of how the creature ended up in the New York Museum of Natural History.  However, the final chapter of the book throws in another twist, something that explains the creature’s high intelligence and ability to understand human voices.  If you’re not expecting what’s revealed in the twist ending, the information revealed may give you a bit of a thrill.

Of course, the information at the very end of Relic leads into the book’s sequel, Reliquary.

As a whole, Relic is a fantastic book that delivers a ton of horrors and thrills and enough science to satisfy most readers.  The book starts out big and continues on a blistering fast pace until the very last page.  It’s bloody, it’s evil, and the experience during the premier of the Superstition exhibition is a straight out of a nightmare.

As you can probably guess, I enjoyed reading Relic.  The book was one big thrill ride.  Yes, parts of it did feel like Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, but these are two completely different stories.  The setting inside of the New York Museum of Natural History was fantastic.  While reading the story, it literally felt as if I was walking along the museum’s hallways and past the exhibits and research areas.

Relic is a must-read for those people interested in horror novels involving mystical creatures or even the occult.  There’s plenty of science here to back up the story, and most of the characters are believable.  As I stated earlier, the Museum itself is quite fascinating, both as a location and the way that its director runs the place.

I can’t wait until it’s time to read another book by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child!