Relic (novel)
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| Author |
Lincoln Child, Douglas Preston |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Aloysius Pendergast |
| Genre | Horror, science fiction, thriller |
| Publisher | Tor Books |
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Publication date
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1995 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 34014907 |
| Followed by | Reliquary |
Relic is a 1995 novel by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, and the first in the Special Agent Pendergast series. As a techno-thriller, it comments on the possibilities inherent in genetic manipulation, and is critical of museums and their role both in society and in the scientific community. It is the basis of the film The Relic (1997).
In September 1987, Dr. Julian Whittlesey is leading an expedition through the Amazon Basin, in the Brazilian rainforest, in search of the lost Kothoga tribe. He hopes to prove that they still do exist and in the process learn more about their culture, including their lizard god Mbwun ("He Who Walks On All Fours"), supposedly the son of Satan. However, Whittlesey disappears after finding the mutilated body of his partner, Crocker, and realizes that a creature in the brush is stalking him. A year later, in Belem, a dock worker named Ven is suddenly and brutally killed when a freighter arrives with a shipment of crates from Whittlesey's expedition.
Seven years later, in a fictionalized version of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, two young boys are found dead in a museum stairwell, having gotten lost in the late hours of the museum. NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta leads the subsequent investigation. He has the museum under tight lockdown and its staff placed under curfew, for fear the murderer is still hiding somewhere in the museum or the many catacombs that run underneath it. The three prominent leaders of the museum - curator Winston Wright, deputy head Ian Cuthbert, and public relations director Lavinia Rickman - all try to keep the murders under wraps, as the grand gala opening of the new "Superstition" exhibition, led by George Moriarty, draws nearer, an event that will feature many wealthy benefactors as well as Mayor Harper. Rickman even hires New York Times reporter Bill Smithback, Jr. to cover the murder investigation but repeatedly edits his reports so they will appear more favorable towards the museum and its leadership. Assistant Curator Gregory Kawakita jokingly begins spreading the rumor of the "Museum Beast", a legendary monster that has allegedly been roaming the tunnels under the museum for years and is responsible for the murders. Although the rumors are initially dismissed as myth, D'Agosta is shocked during the autopsy to discover a claw buried in one of the boy's brains.
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