Book Review: Murder as a Fine Art by David Morrell

Murder As A Fine Art

Author: David Morrell

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Date of Publication: May 7, 2013

Pages: 358

     David Morrell has written a fantastic historical novel set in London in 1854.  The two main characters are Thomas and Emily De Quincey.  Thomas was a famous essayist, best known for his 1822 publication "Confessions of an English Opium Eater".  Emily was Thomas' youngest and only surviving child who helped care for the "Opium Eater" in his later years.  Although born into an aristocratic family, Thomas was never adept at finances and spent his younger years living on the streets of London.  In his later years, Thomas was almost always in steep debt, frequently running and hiding from creditors.  Emily was quite the non-comformist, refusing to wear the prescribed corsets and hoop skirts of the day in favor of more comfortable (and risque) "bloomers".  In a later and even more controversial essay,  "On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts", De Quincey wrote a detailed account of the factual Ratcliffe Highway murders which terrorized London in the early 1800s.  This essay as well as other of De Quincey's writings have been said to have had a profound influence on Edgar Allan Poe as well as British writers such as George Orwell.  With this historical background, let's talk about this book!

     De Quincey and his daughter are invited to London, ostensibly to promote a new collection of essays.  Shortly after their return, a vicious multiple homicide occurs near the scene of the now decades old Ratcliffe Highway murders.  The circumstances and details are almost identical to the original crime.  Enter Detective Sean Ryan of Scotland Yard aided by a young, ambitious Constable Becker.  They become acutely aware of De Quincey's familiarity with the case.  Lacking a credible alibi Thomas De Quincey becomes Suspect #1.

     The plot leads the police as well as "the Opium Eater" and his daughter through all of London.  The city is described in graphic detail, including the homeless and destitute living on the streets and under bridges and the coal dust which covers the entire city including the more prestigious neighborhoods.  Like the more contemporary novel The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz, the city of London itself becomes a major part of the novel.  It was fun to read these books back to back (especially just after a trip to London) as it describes many of the same areas nearly a century and a half apart!

     The minor characters are all well developed as well, especially Emily De Quincey and the young Irish detective Sean Ryan.  There seems to be a real chemistry between the two which never really goes anywhere.  Maybe this will progress in the two sequels, Inspector of the Dead and Ruler of the Night.  

     A note of caution to the faint of heart: the violent scenes in this novel are very graphic and disturbing.  No details are left to the imagination!
Detective Inspector Sean Ryan and constable Becker
Detective Inspector Sean Ryan and constable Becker
Detective Inspector Sean Ryan and constable Becker

     Murder as a Fine Art is a well plotted, fast moving and entertaining mystery novel with excellent writing and engaging characters.  It was a fantastic series debut and I can't wait to read the next two installments!

Thomas De Quincey

Book Review: The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz

The Word is Murder

Author: Anthony Horowitz

Publisher: HarperCollins Publisher

Date of Publication: June 5, 2018

Pages: 400

     This novel represents a truly unique take on the thriller/mystery genre.  The premise is intriguing: An older lady calmly walks into a London undertaker and plans her own funeral.  Later that night she is strangled in her home.  The victim's son is a very famous theater and movie star who currently lives in Los Angeles.  The celebrity factor of this murder puts added pressure on the London police who have no clue as to who might have been the murderer.  The police hire Daniel Hawthorne, a master detective but difficult and flawed human being.  Hawthorne was fired by Scotland Yard years before for reasons that don't become clear until mid-way in the story.  The dishonored detective is used frequently as a consultant, especially on hard to solve and high profile cases.  Needing income, Hawthorne wants a writer to follow him along on this case to document things and eventually write a book about the case.  In a very interesting plot device, Hawthorne hires Anthony Horowitz!  The author puts himself in the fictional story as a first person narrator.  It sounds like a weird contrivance, but it works and it works splendidly!

     The author becomes Watson to Hawthorne's Holmes, at times becoming a detective himself as he tries to learn more about his reclusive subject and solve the case at the same time.  The two main characters don't particularly like each other which adds tension and some humor to the story line.  Hawthorne and Horowitz, working together cover great portions of London tracking down clues and suspects.  The two become competitive at one point and go in different directions to attempt to one-up each other.  Years prior to the current murder, the victim was a driver in a hit and run accident which resulted in the death of a toddler.  This sets the stage for a revenge motive which the detective and writer explore at great lengths.  There are other suspects and motives which are cleverly woven into this complex but entertaining plot line.  The story comes to a surprising and frightening conclusion, complete with a dramatic rescue.

     Modern London is also a star in this novel.  Horowitz has a keen eye for detail and enables the reader to feel as if he has been to that marvelous city.  Having just returned from a vacation in London and Liverpool, I was entertained by the descriptions of the many neighborhoods and districts of London traversed by the two main characters. 

     This is the first of a planned Daniel Hawthorne series and I look forward to future installments.  The Word is Murder is fantastic start to what I hope becomes a long series.

Book Review: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

The Wright Brothers

Author: David McCullough

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Date of Publication: May 5, 2015

Pages: 320

     David McCullough is a two time Pulitzer Prize winner (for biographies of Harry Truman and John Quincy Adams) and has won multiple other awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Here he turns his incredible research and writing skills towards Orville and Wilbur Wright, the designers and pilots of the first controlled, sustained and powered flight of a heavier than air aircraft.

The Wright Brothers National Memorial
Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina

                           

      The first part of this book details the early childhood and education of Wilbur and Orville Wright in Dayton, Ohio.  There were five Wright siblings.  Their mother, Susan Koerner Wright, was the more deductive and logical thinking parent and fostered an inquisitive nature in all of her children.  Their father, Bishop Milton Wright, was a clergyman who traveled a lot for work.  He brought the boys a toy "helicopter" back from one trip. The toy was basically a propeller on a stick with rubber bands which would fly when released.  Both Orville and Wilbur were fascinated with this toy and proceeded to build their own versions when the original finally broke.  Neither Orville or Wilbur attended college, starting a printing business instead.  Wilbur had planned to attend Yale, but was injured in an ice hockey accident and following a prolonged convalescence joined Orville in his new business venture.  Orville had designed and built his own printing presses.  One of their first clients was a high school classmate and friend, Paul Laurence Dunbar, the renowned African-American poet who was publishing his own newspaper at the time.   As bicycles became a more popular mode of travel Orville and Wilbur opened their own cycle shop and later began manufacturing their own brand of bicycles.  All the while, they maintained their interest in flight.  They used the proceeds from their business success to fund their own experiments in aircraft design.  They even developed their own wind tunnel to test different wing designs.  They began building gliders based on a bi-wing design originated by the Chicago engineer Octave Chanute.  They were disappointed by the amount of lift they were getting with their initial gliders and began to question the equations and calculations of Otto Lilienthal, a German aviation pioneer.  Wilbur made his own calculations based on their wind tunnel experiments and used these to perfect wing shape and design of the Wright gliders

Reconstruction of the Wright Brothers
living quarters and workshop.
Kill Devil Hills, N.C.

The 1903 Flyer replica with the Monument
in the background.

     Lift was the first of three major problems which had to be solved in order for the first flight to be successful.  The others were control and power.  At this point in the story, the Wrights had moved their glider testing to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.  They had asked for wind data from the National Weather Service and found the the Outer Banks of North Carolina were the second windiest place on the continent (Chicago was first).  The brothers wanted privacy and secrecy as they carried out their experiments, so the Outer Banks became their first choice.  The Outer Banks in 1900 was an obscure sand bar, reachable only by boat.  It was described by contemporaries as harder to get to than Tibet (many modern vacationers on a summer Saturday or Sunday may think it is still so).  

     The chapters that describe the experiences on the Outer Banks are fascinating.  Wilbur made the first trip North Carolina in 1900 and made it as far as Elizabeth City.  It took him four days to find someone with a boat who had heard of Kitty Hawk.  It then took three days to get from Elizabeth City to Kitty Hawk.  The total isolation and harsh environment is very vividly described here.  Over the years the Wrights were aided by the few locals including the staff of the Kitty Hawk life saving station (that building is now The Black Pelican Restaurant).  Solving the control issue was difficult but Orville and Wilbur studied the many birds on the Outer Banks to help them decipher how to smoothly and predictably control direction and elevation during flight.  They found the turkey buzzard particularly helpful!  These large ungainly birds use the tips of their wings to alter their direction and the brothers used that concept to better control their glider.  

The original motor from the 1903 Wright Flyer
Kill Devil Hills, NC

     The final piece of the puzzle was how to power the glider to sustain flight.  They approached the automobile manufacturers of the day who told them that an engine with the weight limitations and power requirements was impossible to build.  This is when Charlie Taylor played an integral role in the whole project.  This fellow was a machinist whom the brothers had hired to manage their bicycle business in Dayton, Ohio while they were off doing their experiments in North Carolina.  When the brother explained their engine problem to Charlie he built a four cylinder gasoline powered engine out of aluminum which was light enough for the glider but could produce more than the needed horsepower.  The Wrights also had to design their own propellers since their were no precedents for this.  Nautical propellers were useless and the Wrights carved their own propellers which closely resembled the toy helicopter of their youth.  This set the stage for the first successful flight, piloted by Orville (chosen by a flip of a coin), at Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903.   The news traveled very slowly in those days and their was great skepticism in the aviation community that the Wright Brothers had actually accomplished the first flight.   The next section of the book details their refinement of their "Wright Flyer" which was accomplished closer to home in Huffman Prarie, an 84 acre cow pasture eight miles north of Dayton.  The remainder of the book describes how the brothers presented their invention to the world.  The United States government was slow to recognize the importance so Wilbur took the flyer to France and demonstrated its efficacy through multiple exhibition flights at Le Mans.  Eventually the U.S. recognized the Wright's invention and its potential.   Orville was then able to perform exhibition flights at Fort Myer, Virginia.  There is a video of a 1909 flight at Fort Myer on YouTube.  The first air crash fatality occurred at Fort Myer when a guy wire came loose mid-flight interfering with the propeller.  Orville crash landed, killing his military passenger and being seriously injured himself.

Replica of the 1903 Wright Flyer - Kill Devil Hills, N.C.
(The original is in the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum, Washington, D.C.)

     Following the exhibition flights the Wrights formed their own production company and spent the ensuing years perfecting their design and fighting patent infringements in the courts.

     Wilbur died of typhoid fever at age 45 in 1912.  Orville lived until 1948 and died of a heart attack.  Orville lived long enough to see the terrible effects of the airplane in warfare and even witnessed the atomic bomb dropped from a descendant of his invention.  In his later years Orville wrote: 

  "We dared to hope we had invented something that would bring lasting peace to the earth. But we were wrong ... No, I don't have any regrets about my part in the invention of the airplane, though no one could deplore more than I do the destruction it has caused. I feel about the airplane much the same as I do in regard to fire. That is, I regret all the terrible damage caused by fire, but I think it is good for the human race that someone discovered how to start fires and that we have learned how to put fire to thousands of important uses."

     

     McCullough's book very thoroughly tells the Wright Brothers story as the fable that it has become: that two humble brothers, both high school drop-outs, confirmed bachelors and bicycle mechanics, together solved the problems which allowed man to fly.  This equal effort, equal ingenuity and equal credit fable is challenged in a recent article by William Hazelgrove in the December, 2018 issue of Smithsonian Magazine.  In his article "Why Wilbur Wright Deserves the Bulk of the Credit for the First Flight" Hazelgrove asserts that Wilbur had the imagination and deductive reasoning required to figure out what needed to be done to create a flying machine.  Orville was the "historian" - recording events as they happened on paper and on film.  According to Hazelgrove, the fact that Orville lived so much longer allowed him to write the history the way he saw it - with shared credit given to both brothers.  Hazelgrove uses the brothers' own writings to justify this viewpoint, especially when Wilbur describes "his" flyer and "his" propeller when writing to his father.  McCullough used the same resources to create his book but did not jump to this conclusion.  A 1930 article about Orville Wright recently republished in The New Yorker magazine points out that in an Encyclopedia Britannica article (also published in 1930) about the first flight, all of the credit is given to Wilbur with almost no mention of Orville.  That encylcopedia article was written by Orville Wright.

     Regardless of which account you adhere to, the story of the Wright Brothers is a fantastic testament to creativity, problem solving and "thinking outside of the box".  McCullough's book is a very readable and entertaining as well as instructive read.  I recommend it highly to anyone who has visited or plans to visit the Outer Banks!

The first powered flight at Kill Devil Hills, NC, December 17, 1903

The Wright Brothers Memorial Monument at Kill Devil Hills, illuminated during a Light Art exhibition, August, 2018

Book Review: Her Every Fear by Peter Swanson

Her Every Fear

Author: Peter Swanson

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Date of Publication: January 10, 2017

Pages: 352

     Peter Swanson is rapidly climbing my favorite author list.  He's not quite up there with Michael Connelley but he's getting there!  I first read The Girl with a Clock for a Heart about a year ago,then devoured The Kind Worth Killing and now Her Every Fear.  Each of these books shares common traits.  All three have intricate, twisting and unpredictable plots.  The author was educated in Mssachusetts and now lives in Somerset.  Each of these stories is mainly set in Boston, a town the author obviously knows very well..  The characters in all of the novels are flawed "everymen and everywomen" who can be identified with.They each have a different but very unique premise.  This book has the most despicable villains.  Another cool feature is that the author pays homage to previous thriller and mystery writers by having his characters read time-honored novels.  Peter Swanson also has a great respect for all things Alfred Hitchcock.  Her Every Fear pays tribute to Hitchcock's classic "Rear Window".

    Kate Priddy is a young British woman recovering from a trauma inflicted by an ex-boyfriend  After months of therapy she agrees to trade apartments for six months with a distant male cousin from Boston whom she has never met.  The day Kate moves into his Beacon Hill apartment a dead woman named Audrey Marshall is found in the adjacent apartment.  The ensemble cast of characters includes a creepy man who has been stalking the now dead woman, some quite eccentric older apartment residents and the cousin who may have been involved romantically with the murdered neighbor.  The cousin's former college roommate surfaces from time to time as well.  The murky plot moves along at a slow but steady pace and has plenty of unanticipated twists and turns.  Just when you think you have everything figured out something unravels and you have to rethink things.  So, who killed Audrey Marshall?  You have to read the whole book to find out!

     Go get a book by Peter Swanson and read it.  It doesn't matter which one.  They are totally independent stories (albeit with some common structural features) and they are all equally good.

The Stanford Freshman Required Reading List (2018)

      Stanford University annually assigns three books to be read by their incoming freshman class.  Last year the topics included poverty, race and climate change.  This years single topic is immigration.  Wanting to be as well read as these eighteen and nineteen year olds I decided to read them as well.  Here are my thoughts regarding these three books, all of which were superb.

    The three books this year are: Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat,  Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee and Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (translated from Spanish by Lisa Dillman).  

     Signs Preceding the End of the World is interesting on several fronts.  It is a very short novel translated from its original Spanish.  This book paints a memorable picture of an illegal border crossing.  This is the story of Makina, a young Mexican woman sent across the border by her mother to deliver a message to her brother.  First, she must find her brother.  The author describes the border crossing in terse, descriptive writing:

"Rucksacks.  What do people whose life stops here take with them?  Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time.  Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp.  Jackets.  People who left took jackets because they'd been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way.  They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket.  Photos, photos, photos.  They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters."

     Once Makina crosses the border the quest to find her brother reminded me of Paulo Cueho's The Alchemist.  It becomes an epic journey of growth and understanding aided by gangsters and fellow illegals.  There is an interesting addendum by the translator describing her difficulty in maintaining the author's intent.  She notes the research she did to make sure the idioms and inflections of speech written by the author in Spanish are preserved in the translation.  This is a very valuable book for helping to understand the view from the other side of the border.

     Chang-Rae Lee is a Korean-American and teaches creative writing at Stanford.  Native Speaker, published in 1995, was his first novel.  The novel tells the story of Henry Park, a son of Korean immigrants who works as an industrial spy.  The whole theme of this book centers on Henry's constant attempt at assimilation -  the social process of absorbing one cultural group into harmony with another.   Henry reflects back on his upbringing by immigrant parents trying to preserve their native culture  and constantly compares that to his current life.  Henry is married to a white woman and their marital struggles mirror his larger cultural dilemmas.  As part of his job, Henry infiltrates the campaign of a Korean-American politician in New York.  This politician's success is due in large part to his ability to bridge the divides between the ethnic and cultural groups who must coexist in his city.  It is hard to believe that this book is over twenty years old.  The culture clashes described are very contemporary and one scene was reminiscent of the violence in Charlottesville last August.  Native Speaker is important because it redefines the old "Melting Pot" analogy of America we all learned in  grade school.  There is no one "American" culture to which all immigrants must eventually be part of.  Instead, we are a cauldron of differences, all of which need to be celebrated, but the parts of which need to learn to peacefully coexist.  Henry Park notes the problems with this "assimilation" thinking when describing his wishes for his own son:

"And despite Lelia's insistence that he go to Korean school on the weekends, I knew our son would never learn the old language, this was never in question, and my hope was that he would grow up with a singular sense of his world, a life univocal, which might have offered him the authority and confidence that his broad half-yellow face could not.  Of course, this is assimilist sentiment, part of my own ugly and half-blind romance with the land."

     Later, he describes the scene outside of a crowded Chinese take-out in Brooklyn:

"I know I'm American because I order too much when I eat Chinese.  We stand outside with everyone else, the crowd mixed, Jews and Hispanics, Asians and blacks.  Everyone gets along.  There's cross-talking and joking.  Easy laughs.  It's something enough, I suppose, when you know you will soon eat the same food."

     Edwidge Danticat is a very talented author and native of Haiti.  She has  written numerous outstanding novels including Breath, Eyes, Memory which was an Oprah book club selection.  She has been a National Book Award Finalist and Brother, I'm Dying won a National Book Critics Circle Award Winner for autobiography.   She has been quoted as saying: “Writing has been the primary way I have tried to make sense of my losses.”  In this book she tells the stories of her father who successfully emigrated to New York and her uncle Joseph who cared for her in Haiti when first her father and then her mother left.

    The author is master of description, both of her native Haiti and her adopted home in New York:

"After my parents were married, they moved into a small house in an increasingly packed section of Bel Air.  The cement floor of their two-room rental was the same drab color as the walls.  There were no windows or jalousies, just some diamond-shaped openings in the concrete, which let in some air and also plenty of water when it rained.  My mother decorated the best she could, draping the walls with wide ruffled curtains she made herself."

    She also has the ability to convey the deep emotions of a situation without being maudlin.  Her depiction of her years separated from her parents and siblings is particularly relevant to today's immigration headlines.  She very adeptly explains the political struggles in Haiti, both before and after her emigration.  Her uncles role in the continued upheaval defines the difficulty this family had balancing life in its new country versus concern for events and loved ones in its former country.

     Each of these books is valuable in its own way to help the reader understand some of the issues surrounding the current immigration debate.  Signs Preceding the End of the World very vividly depicts the danger and anxiety of an illegal border crossing.  Native Speaker illustrates the difficulties even legal immigrants face when trying to adjust to and  blend into a completely alien culture and society.  Brother, I'm Dying shows how difficult it is to completely extricate oneself from one's native country, especially when loved ones are left behind in a tumultuous situation.  

     These books as a group also have an enormous importance.  You can take any hot button social issue (think gay marriage, capital punishment, gun control, etc...)  and debate it in the abstract. When you add a human dimension to the debate, people become more empathetic and often the thinking becomes a bit softened.  These three outstanding books add that human dimension to the immigration debate and hopefully would soften the harsh rhetoric we are currently hearing.  I enjoyed reading all three and would recommend them all.  

Book Review: Idaho by Emily Ruskovich

Idaho

Author: Emily Ruskovich

Publisher: Gale Group

Date of Publication: November 7, 2017

Pages: 336

  I am honestly not completely sure how I feel about this book.  I read it because it was nominated for the Best First Novel by an American Author Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America (it eventually lost that honor to She Rides Shotgun by Jordan Harper).  Also, one of the main characters suffers from hereditary pre-senile dementia.  My mother died of complications of Alzheimer's disease, so memory loss and literary depictions of it interest me.  Then, reading little bits of this I realized that Emily Ruskovich is a very talented writer and her lyrical writing style drew me in.  So, it was with great anticipation that I began reading Idaho.

   For starters, the writing does not disappoint.  The author maintains a very high level of interesting and eloquent descriptions, especially of the harsh life in the Montana mountains.  Her characters are complex and intriguing, even mysterious at times.  The main two characters, Wade (who spirals downward with dementia) and his second wife Ann, are unforgettable.  The author deftly reveals tragedy after tragedy in each of their lives.  It is obvious early on that something horrible happened between Wade and his first wife Jenny.  The central theme is Ann trying to decipher exactly what happened and how.  The cause of death of one of Wade and Jenny's daughters and the disappearance of the other are the central mysteries of Idaho.

     The book succeeds magnificently in its depiction of dementia, not only in how the sufferer feels and copes but in how the disease devastates the lives of those who care about them.  The angst Wade feels as he realizes he is losing his grip on reality and the terror Ann experiences as Wade becomes violent and dangerous are gripping.

     My only gripe about Idaho, but it is a major one, is that there is a very open ending to the story.  Maybe the author is leaving room for a sequel or maybe she wants us to use our own imagination to finish the story.  I was a bit angry at the end that there were so many loose ends.  But maybe that's just me.  This book is very valuable in its depiction of a desperate dementia patient and the devastating impact on his family and community.  For those who have not lived with this first-hand, Idaho gives very empathetic insights into what is becoming a very common crisis.

Book Review: The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

The Lost City of the Monkey God

Author: Douglas Preston

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Date of Publication: September 5, 2017

Pages: 407

     Douglas Preston is a multi-faceted and accomplished writer.  He has written articles for "National Geographic" and "The New Yorker" as well as non-fiction best sellers (The Monster of Florence).  He is also the co-author with Lincoln Child of a best-selling detective series.  He uses all of the tools in his toolbox for The Lost City of the Monkey God.  It has all of the detail and science contained in a serious periodical piece, the pace and style of the best fiction, and it tells a truly fascinating (and true) story to boot.

     The Lost City chronicles an expedition to find the legendary "White City" in Honduras.  For five hundred years people have speculated on the existence of a huge lost city in the rain forest which had been the home of a vanished culture.  Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes reported hearing of a vast community with great wealth and from this the legend grew.  Over the ensuing centuries various researchers, archeologists and explorers hypothesized on the location.  Interest in this lost city increased in the 1990s and several attempts were made to find it in the early 2000s.  It wasn't until the advent of lidar technology (lidar is an acronym for light imaging, detection and ranging) that a credible location for the White City could be defined.  The author adroitly explains this space age technology and how it has been used to find historical sites buried in sand in the Middle East.  Science readers will appreciate this chapter.   Preston goes on to describe how lidar was used in the Honduran rain forest and how it helped pinpoint a possible location for further exploration.  It was film maker Steve Elkins, fascinated by the legend of the lost White City, who proposed using lidar to try to locate it.  It was Elkins who finally got this expedition together once the possible location was discovered with lidar.

   Once the planning and funding of the expedition was arranged, Preston was invited to join the team as a journalist.  Permission from the Honduran government was finally obtained (politics is politics, regardless of what country) and the expedition was on.  What follows is a vivid portrayal of a wild experience worthy of an Indiana Jones movie!  Dilapidated helicopters delivered a motley group of scientists and academics deep into an impenetrable jungle.  Camp sites were protected by incompetent and corrupt members of the Honduran armed forces.  Danger was around every tree.  Here is how Preston describes what happened on his first night in the jungle:  "Eager to record some of the stories being told, I hurried back to my hammock on the other side of camp to fetch my notebook.  My new headlamp was defective, so Juan Carlos loaned me a crank flashlight."  Needless to say, Preston got disoriented in the dark, lost the trail but finally found his way back to the campsite.  "Thrilled to be safely back in camp, I circled the hammock, probing the wall of forest with my light for the path that would take me to where the rest of the group was chatting.  On my second circle of the hammock, I froze as my beam passed over a huge snake."  It was a fer-de-lance, one of the largest and deadliest of the venomous snakes indigenous to the area.  "It was staring at me, in striking position, its head swaying back and forth, its tongue flicking in and out.  I had walked right past it - twice."  An unbelievable two page description of bringing the six foot snake down follows.  This description is more frightening than anything every written by Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe or anybody else for that matter!

     There is a lot here for history buffs as well.  Preston educates the reader about "Pre-Columbian" and "Post-Columbian" eras in Central America and also about Mayan and other native cultures.  Many artifacts were discovered in the areas pin-pointed by the lidar scans and knowledge of the history and culture of the area was critical when trying to elucidate their origins and time period.

     The story doesn't end with the expedition.  For months after everyone returned, more and more of the explorers became sick with fevers, muscle aches, cramps and skin lesions.  This included Douglas Preston who came down with the illness while on a holiday with his wife in Switzerland and France.  Several chapters follow which discuss various tropical and infectious diseases.  Eventually the National Institute of Health became involved and the responsible parasite was finally identified and proper treatment prescribed. 

     In summary, this book was exciting, fascinating, educational and scary.  Often all at the same time.  I can't recommend it highly enough.