06/17/2024
The tedious 22nd installment of Preston and Child’s series featuring paranormal FBI investigator Aloysius Pendergast (after The Cabinet of Dr. Leng) gets tangled in convoluted series lore. Pendergast has used a dimensional portal to follow his ward, Constance Greene, to an alternate version of 1880 New York City, where they hope to protect Constance’s siblings from sadistic doctor Enoch Leng, who is prepared to kill them in his pursuit of Constance’s life-extending formula. Pendergast’s evil twin brother, Diogenes, has followed the pair through the portal and begun cozying up to Leng—though he claims to Constance and his brother that it’s all part of a master plan to bring down the doctor. Complicating matters, in the present, Leng is one of Pendergast’s distant ancestors, which means that killing the doctor could also wipe out Pendergast and his brother. Preston and Child pepper the action with contrivances and tension-draining dei ex machina, all in service of a story that has long since jumped the shark. Clanging dialogue (“Consider it a raspberry pip under the dentures of the space-time continuum”) doesn’t help. Pendergast and his cohorts have seen better days. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Aug.)