Review

PUBLICATION DATE: JANUARY 31, 2012

I

’m new to the suspense/thriller genre—unless you count Sherlock Holmes, my all-time favorite hero.  Recently, I began reading Robert Ludlum (thanks to Matt Damon’s portrayal of Jason Bourne), Michael Connelly (because I saw the movie adaptation of The Lincoln Lawyer starring Matthew McConaughey), and Jeffrey Deaver (of The Bone Collector Denzel Washington fame).  As you can see, it helps when I can attach a handsome face to the novel’s lead.  Cold Vengeance is my first encounter with Preston & Child; first mystery novel without a movie adaptation to pique my interest.

First impression: unputdownable. It opens right smack in the middle of the story and hurtles on like a car with busted brakes. It’s the second book in a series, and it doesn’t pause much to bring you up to speed. I took it as a challenge not to expect any spoon-feeding from the authors.

With a title like Cold Vengeance, I was expecting explosive action and gruesome murders, but was pleasantly surprised to encounter a more elegant thriller.

FBI Special Agent  Aloysius Pendergast employs both cunning and panache as he solves the mystery of his wife’s death (rather, the staging of it) and dodges the powerful people who prefer to keep their secrets buried.

Pendergast is eccentric, intelligent, and privileged. I liked him immediately. It was like meeting a modern day Sherlock Holmes. Thankfully, this one is more reminiscent of the original, grittier than the pretty boy image Robert Downey, Jr. has given him.

But if you’re new to the world of Pendergast, like me, I don’t think Cold Vengeance is the best starting point. It’s the middle of a series, and unfortunately feels like it has no beginning and end. It doesn’t give you much context from the first novel, and doesn’t resolve anything by the last chapter.

I liked it because it was different from other part-two books which narrated so much background information that it positively dragged. But in the end, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit cheated of a true ending. I felt like I stuck with Pendergast for all these hours only to find, at the last chapter, that we had accomplished basically nothing, and the story still hadn’t ended. It was frustrating.

That being said, I’m still thankful to Preston & Child—the novel they wrote may be three stars at best, but the character they created was without a doubt five stars, and one I will be glad to read again and again.




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