Cemetery Dance (Special Agent Pendergast Series #9)

a great taut tale

In Manhattan, New York Times William Smithback and his wife Museum of Natural History anthropologist Nora Kelly arrive home after celebrating their first anniversary with plans to do more rejoicing. Instead they are attacked in their apartment building by a neighbor, out of work British actor Colin Fearing. To the horror of Kelly; her beloved spouse is killed during the assault while his crazed killer leaves.----------------

NYPD obtains testimony from Nora and others who saw Fearing murder Smithback and the building's surveillance tape captures Fearing leaving dripping blood everywhere. The case is solved except for one problem as FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast and New York Police Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta learn; Fearing died two weeks ago having been found in the Hudson River.--------------------

Fans will be stunned with the opening sequence when long time secondary character Smithback is killed. That just sets the table for a great tense police thriller as Agent Pendergast investigates how could a dead man commit murder? The above paragraphs are the beginning of a great taut tale that fans will appreciate and newcomers will look for Aloysius' back cases (see THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS).----------------------

Harriet Klausner

12 out of 18 people found this review helpful.

What a Roller Coaster Ride of Pure Fun

I was just stunned when Bill Smithback was brutally murdered in chapter one. Bill was in Thunderhead along with Nora Kelly which happens to be my favorite of all books. So I was in tears when he was killed. I liked Bill who was funny, kind, loved Nora, an unlikely hero, and a reported who just bummbled into a newspaper story. Preston and Child are good at characterizations and make you feel like you know the character personally..

The plot is about a voodoo cult who sacrifice animals in the name of their beliefs. There is a zombie on the loose murdering people connected to a society to protect animals from ritual killings. The scenes where the animals are sacrificed are heart wretching. There is also a creepy underground tunnel that chilled me to the core. I was glued to this chair until I finished those chapters.

D'Agosta is assigned to solve Smithback's murder. Pendergast gets involved in the case because he was Smithback's friend also. They begin to slowly research and piece the crimes and evidence together. The plot is not slow and just takes off like a roller coaster ride.

The evil person is just as intelligent and cunning as Pendergast which makes the final chapters exciting and thrilling. It is like Sherlock Holmes versus Professor Moriarty with Pendergast as Holmes of course.

The end is clever, witty, and very creative. I have to say I rather loved the epilogue. I can't give anything way here so I will say it was a beautiful way to say good-bye to Smithback.

Well written and an exciting plot. If you have not read Thunderhead, you have to read it. That is Bill Smithback and Nora Kelly's story. This book is one of Preston and Child's best books.

11 out of 11 people found this review helpful.

Cemetery Dance

What a disappointment! I have read all the 8 books Preston & Child have written and enjoyed them thoroughly. But not this one. It is a total bore. In fact, half way through, I have given up. I closed the book and will donate it to a book fair. Foolishsly, I purchased two signed copies months before publication. Rick Whitaker

3 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

Great!!

First of all, fauvemistral should have checked their spelling before posting. It's hard to get your scathing point across when you can't spell. Anyway, great book, as usual! Love this series!! Don't hesitate to buy!!

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

Gotta Love Pendergast!

I absolutely LOVE these books and am SO excited there is a new one out!! I LOVE Aloysius Pendergast and am going out to get this wonderful book TOMO an B&N! Thank the gods for Preston and Child!

2 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

We haven't actually read the book yet, but anticipate that it will be awesome. Nobody's better than Pendergast!

2 out of 10 people found this review helpful.

absoulutly great

I cannot say enough about how pleased I am to have found this series.I love it.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Another Pendergast tale- good for those who are not superstitious

If you like this series, this book is a must as it ties up many 'loose ends' from the previous storyline... However, people who are easily made squeamish by supernatural references may not enjoy the major plot

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Another SOLID Pendergast offering from these brilliant authors!

Despite what some critics here say, this one will NOT disappoint true Preston-Child fans. I could not put this one down! Ok, the zombie angle may be schmaltzy, but it is ALL EXPLAINED in the end. I could not BELIEVE they had Smithback killed in this - I will miss him terribly like an old friend in real life. The authors are THAT good. Pendergast and D'agosta make one of the best sleuthing teams in literary history, in my opinion, and this one lives up to expectations. The book has a few moments where I had to put it down and shrieked out loud. These guys know how to write! I highly recommend this to readers; however, you may want to read their earlier books to know the characters first. R.I.P. William Smithback - your fans will miss you more than we can say. Preston & Child - congratulations on a FINE offering.. Keep up the fantastic work!!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The best Pendergast yet!

I was surprised to find that when I read this, which I did alone before listening to it on CD with someone else in the car, I was actually scared in a couple of places! The last time any book actually scared me was Preston and Child's Still Life with Crows, and that was only once when someone popped up at a window unexpectedly. I am a veteran of many vampire and other horror novels. and this is the best zombie novel ever, only rivaled by the more voodoo-y The Red of His Shadow, which I recommend. It has it all over the "28 days' type zombie stories in that there is a bizarre religion involved in the creation and support of the zombie population, as opposed to some virus.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Not one of the better Preston Child books

First let me say that I am a Preston Child fan, having read all their books. "Cemetery Dance", unfortunately, is not one of their better efforts. The plot, even for them, is not believable, and once the solution to the mystey has been revealed,not really very well conceived. The bad guys and support characters are stereotypical and are borrowed from TV detective shows. Many scenes of this book appear to have been based on a few 1970's Columbo episodes. Bill Smithback always was a character one could rely on for comic relief and has been a solid fixture in the Preston Child series, and its too bad he was "written off" in such a sub par story. Perhaps it is time Preston and Child to step away from this series for a year or two and concentrate on an independent, more creative, and well developed story line.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Best Yet

This is the best in my opinion since Still Life With Crows. Keep them coming~

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Yet another book by writers who have no understanding of Caribbean culture

It remains amazing that so many "educated" persons still do not get that Obeah is a Jamaican cultural form while Voodoo is Haitian. There is NO correaltion beyond the fact that both had African slavery origins. Voodoo is actually linked with Catholicism and has a very structured system of gods. Obeah is linked to the spiritual world in that it provides protection for its belivers against evil forces through work of the practioners. Practioners provide believers with protection charms and there is sometimes use of bible verses. I would recommend that non-Caribbean people, who do NOT understand the difference and who are not willing to do the work to research their subjects thoroughly, really ought NOT to write about things they do not undertand.

1 out of 14 people found this review helpful.

A must read

Great book. Keeps you guessing

Pendergast and Vinnie back on the grind

A very long build-up that leads to an interesting yet rushed climax. I did not enjoy this installment as much as the others. It feels as if the authors wrote this as a filler novel until the next Pendergast adventure. Much of the novel was a slow read. The climax was good but once the reader gets there, the explanation feels a bit rushed. I hope the next novel returns to the glory of the first few in the series. Overall not bad but not what I have come to expect from Pendergast and company.

Too slow...

The conclusion was clever but the book was a terribly slow read and I would not recommend this to anyone...

Too expensive--$4.95 in hardcover at Walmart

Not worth $9.99 ---

I love Preston & Child!

Special Agent Pendergast - a character sooooo smooth that ya gotta love the guy - quirks, over the top intelligence, wealth, logical and all that good stuff. I can only say, with the Pendergast series, I always have to remind myself to breathe when I get to the last 100 pages of any of the books. Very intense - I'm always exhausted after I finish the books. I've read all 9 - ready for the next. I strongly suggest that if you haven't read the series yet to start with Relic and worth your way through - a great read, all of them....and I DID mention intense, right?

Preston & Child Phone It In

I'm a fan of Lincoln and Child. To date, I have read all they have written together. Highly recommend all of their books, just not this one or the "Wheel of Darkness". Cemetary Dance is poorly written. The writing in most of the chapters reads as if it were the product of a 14 year old. Don't take my word for it though,just read any of the first 10 chapters yourself. Too lazy to write something new they recycle scary bits from their book "Relic". How much milage can you get from characters trapped in museum offices while the "bad guy" jiggles the door knob? What happened to DeAgosta? Supposedly a smart cop and previously wonderful character (read Brimstone) reduced in this novel to a ranting short-tempered idiot. Hard to see what the sphinx Pendergast sees in him. Why kill off Smithback? Next to Pendergast, he was the most interesting and complex character in the series. While all the Lincoln and Child books require that the reader suspend reality when it comes to the plot and story line, this one was just plan silly. For example, in one chapter a zombie attempts to climb through a window of a high-rise appartment to murder one of the main characters and gets his clothing caught on a NAIL! Please! How many modern Manhattan high-rises have wooden window sills with nails! I've seen more interesting episodes of the old Scooby Do. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY ON THIS ONE. BETTER TO READ "STILL LIFE WITH CROWS", "CABINET OF CURRIOUSITIES", "THUNDERHEAD" or "BRIMSTONE".

Zombies Invade Manhattan!

For starters, the only actor who should ever read the Pendergast novels is Scott Brick. He really does a fantastic job with all the voices, capturing a soft-spoken Louisiana accent for Agent Pendergast that fits to a T. In this installment of the series, Agent Pendergast and Detective D'Agosta go up against a nasty cult-like group on the tip of Manhattan who seem to be launching zombie-like individuals out into the general public, specifically targeting those who are kicking up a fuss about their practice of animal sacrifice. Pendergast, D'Agosta, and a supporting cast of characters are soon up to their ears in voodoo and other scary belief systems. Highly entertaining and atmospheric.