Dou­glas Pre­ston and Lin­coln Child are as gods to me. I wor­ship them. The bril­liant Brim­stone–the first in the Dio­genes Tril­ogy within their eerie, com­pelling thrillers that fea­ture FBI Spe­cial Agent Aloy­sius Pendergast–enthralled me from page one. Pre­ston and Child are eru­dite with­out being stuffy. They scare the hell out of a girl with­out resort­ing to the cheap or lurid. And their prose is to die for.

I’m in mad love with the eccen­tric, intel­lec­tual, deli­ciously South­ern Pen­der­gast. For two years, I’ve been on ten­ter­hooks since Pre­ston and Child stranded him and his pro­tégée Con­stance Green in a remote Tibetan monastery at the end of The Wheel of Dark­ness. Imag­ine my joy when the lat­est install­ment in Pendergast’s adven­tures, Ceme­tery Dance, arrived last week.

This isn’t the best of Pre­ston and Child. Never ones to balk at risks, they kill off one of my favorite recur­ring char­ac­ters up front. I for­gave them for that. Reluc­tantly, but I did for­give them. His demise dri­ves the story that cen­ters around a secre­tive cult, ani­mal sac­ri­fice, and zom­biis. Their plots are always beau­ti­fully planned and their pac­ing is taut, but something’s a lit­tle off here. I didn’t feel the sus­pense as much. Maybe they were tired after each wrote a best­selling book of his own between the last Pen­der­gast novel and this one.

Spe­cial Agent Pen­der­gast is in New York City to inves­ti­gate. But what’s hap­pen­ing to Con­stance back in Tibet? There’s only one ref­er­ence to her here. These guys must love tor­tur­ing their read­ers as much as they do their char­ac­ters. I hope they’re not going to make me wait another two years to find out.  

Ceme­tery Dance may not be Pre­ston and Child at the top of their game, but it’s still a rip­ping good yarn. And I do love them so.