THE CABINET OF DR. LENG

 

THE CABINET OF DR. LENG

A Pendergast Novel

By Preston & Child

Grand Central Publishing

400 pgs

 

We’ve a good friend who every Christmas sends us a book. Many years ago he sent along “The Cabinet of Curiosities,” a thriller by Preston and Child that introduced us to FBI Special Agent Pendergast. It was the third in the series featuring this truly remarkable hero who is easily one of the greatest pulp protagonist ever created. The wealthy investigator with the peculiar Southern heritage we soon discovered was one quarter the Shadow, one quarter Sherlock Holmes, and one quarter Chandu the Magician. We’ll divulge that final quarter in a few minutes. 

As a dedicated lover of pulp fiction, we were instantly enamored and soon became a dedicated fan. Although the third in the series, “Cabinet of Curiosities” was a definitive shift in the saga as it not only introduced Constance Green, a nearly immortal young lady who would become Pendergast’s ward, but also the insidious evil scientist Dr. Leng. By that book’s finale, the series was clearly propelled into the genre of the fantastic. Now, seventeen books later, Preston and Child have come full circle and revived that villain in a truly remarkable tale. 

Spoiler alert. “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng” is only the first part of the story and ends with a dire cliffhanger. At the end of the previous adventure, Constance managed to time-travel back into the past; her goal to find and kill Dr. Leng. She left Pendergast a note asking him not to follow her. Naturally, he ignores it and manages to reconstruct the ruined time machine to go after her. And now, after all these great stories, we see he is also one quarter Captain Future.

From that first book, the Pendergast series has been our favorite new pulp series. It is exciting, innovative, fresh; full of wild, craziness with remarkable, heroic characters and the most black-hearted monsters and villains. “The Cabinet of Dr. Leng” is unrelenting in its pacing and we cannot wait for the second half to arrive. Oh, yeah.