Verses for the Dead
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4.3 • 1.3K Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In this #1 New York Times bestseller, FBI Agent Pendergast reluctantly teams up with a new partner to investigate a rash of Miami Beach murders . . . only to uncover a deadly conspiracy that spans decades.
After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI's New York field office, A. X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment: the famously rogue agent must now work with a partner.
Pendergast and his new colleague, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to investigate a rash of killings in Miami Beach, where a bloodthirsty psychopath is cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them with cryptic handwritten letters at local gravestones. The graves are unconnected save in one bizarre way: all belong to women who committed suicide.
But the seeming lack of connection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the least of Pendergast's worries. Because as he digs deeper, he realizes the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg: a conspiracy of death that reaches back decades.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In the 18th installment of the Agent Pendergast thriller series, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s endearing but exasperating hero confronts a macabre string of crimes. But that’s not the FBI investigator’s only challenge. For the first time, he’s teamed up with a partner: hardboiled junior agent Coldmoon, who’s charged with keeping Pendergast on task while they delve into a string of suspicious suicides. Preston and Child’s dark humor and sly, unexpected twists enliven the agents’ pursuit, and the fiery personality clashes between Pendergast and Coldmoon take this already engaging series in an appealing new direction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The crimes under investigation in Preston and Child's underwhelming 18th thriller featuring FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast (after 2018's City of Endless Night) are tame by the bestselling authors' usual standard. Walter Pickett, an FBI assistant director recently assigned to the New York City field office, is determined to keep maverick Pendergast under his control, unlike his predecessors, and assigns him a partner, Special Agent Coldmoon. Coldmoon is to keep a close eye on him as the two investigators head to Miami Beach, where a human heart has been left on the grave of Elise Baxter, who strangled herself with a bedsheet in Maine 11 years earlier. A note signed Mister Brokenhearts and quoting T.S. Eliot was left along with the freshly harvested organ. Pendergast insists that the choice of grave was an intentional one, and that circumstances of the old suicide be reexamined, even as Mister Brokenhearts strikes again. The X-Files pilot like plot of a younger agent assigned to spy on a brilliant but eccentric colleague is old hat, and Pendergast himself doesn't appear to best advantage in an outing that shows the series' age.
Customer Reviews
Verses for the Dead
Over complicated, much more human, maybe they are trying to make him more approachable. Enjoyable but a bit pedestrian for my favorite writers!
We are all getting older and there have been so many deaths
Top notch
Fantastic, once again. A master story teller.
Good, but not one of their best.
While this was a good crime/mystery novel, it came up short in a couple of areas, especially when compared to other Pendergast books. First, it relegated nearly all of the action to last few chapters, and while this certainly built up the suspense, and added a bit of a twist, it left me feeling shortchanged in the action department. Secondly, this one focused less on Pendergast’s persona and quirks, which may leave new readers all too curious about who he really is. Perhaps this was an intentional ploy by the authors to get readers interested in their titles, but again it left me feeling a bit shortchanged in terms of the main character’s development.
It was still a good read, and the pages kept a turning, but it lacked the action and intrigue when compared to other Pendergast titles.