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Cemetery Dance |  | Authors: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $26.99
Buy Used: $5.29
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Seller: mediastoday
Rating:  161 reviews
Sales Rank: 11949
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Ediition/First Printing
Pages: 448
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 0446580295
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780446580298
ASIN: 0446580295
Publication Date: May 12, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780446580298 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
Pendergast-the world's most enigmatic FBI Special Agent-returns to New York City to investigate a murderous cult.
William Smithback, a New York Times reporter, and his wife Nora Kelly, a Museum of Natural History archaeologist, are brutally attacked in their apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Eyewitnesses claim, and the security camera confirms, that the assailant was their strange, sinister neighbor-a man who, by all reports, was already dead and buried weeks earlier. While Captain Laura Hayward leads the official investigation, Pendergast and Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta undertake their own private-and decidedly unorthodox-quest for the truth. Their serpentine journey takes them to an enclave of Manhattan they never imagined could exist: a secretive, reclusive cult of Obeah and vodou which no outsiders have ever survived.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 161
 Not good. February 23, 2010
Stonerockdude (ohio)
I love the "techno-thriller" genre. I enjoy well developed characters. I become engrossed in plausible or even semi-plausible story lines. Sadly, I missed them all while reading this book. I can't recommend this read to anyone. It wasn't bad - not at all. I just wasn't good.
~* Spoiler Alert Below*~
Cemetery Dance starts with semi-regular Bill Smithback being murdered by an already dead neighbor. Smithback then comes back from the dead and focuses his un-dead anger on a journalistic peer and on his wife (Nora). You guessed it - zombie invasion. The story line starts as unbelievable and becomes even more unbelievable through each chapter. It seems to me that so much space was used to shore-up this weak storyline, that the character development became secondary and incomplete. The masterful development that typifies most Preston and Child novels is lacking here. Two of the most important characters (the villain/"zombie master" and the heroic-animal-sacrifice-cult-leader-who-kills-his-own-personal-zombie-and-saves-DaGosta-and-Hayward) are mere shadows of what they could have been. In addition, the "animal sacrifice cult" is not what it could have been; the ancient "ville" is not what it could have been - there was just insufficient detail about critical and interesting topics; and way too much detail and emphasis on DaGosta's anger, Pendergast's teacher, and other mundane items.
This is just not a typical effort for these guys. I'm not saying that I won't read every book they write - because I will - I am just saying that Cemetery Dance was not good.
 Another Preston-Child Hit February 21, 2010
Sandra Kirkland (High Point, North Carolina United States)
Norah Kelly, a famous archaeologist, and William Smithback, New York Times reporter, are celebrating their first wedding anniversary. But the celebration turns tragic when a man breaks into their apartment and kills Smithback. The man is easily identifiable; he's one of their neighbors. The police expect an easy arrest until they learn that the neighbor had been declared dead a week before.
Police Lieutenant Vinnie D'Agosto is assigned the case which gets stranger and stranger. Norah is stalked by a hulking figure that seems to be the neighbor and then later, after his body is stolen from the morgue, by her dead husband Smithback. There are fetishes found and the newspapers jump on this evidence of voodoo and start to call the figures zombies. D'Agosto is joined in his hunt for the killers by Special FBI Agent Aloysius Pendergast.
There is mystery galore. An ancient church taken over by a cult seems to be involved. There is a young newspaper reporter who is caught up in the story, and more and more sightings of the mysterious figures. Then Norah is kidnapped. Can Pendergast and D'Agosto solve the mystery before more people are killed, sending the city into panic?
This is the ninth Pendergast/D'Agosto mystery written by this successful team of authors. Fans of their earlier works will not be disappointed and those mystery readers who haven't yet experienced a Preston/Child book will find a new series to explore. This book is recommended for mystery lovers of all ages.
 Pendergast novels are losing their touch February 8, 2010
kashifm (Illinois, USA)
I am a big fan of both the authors in general and pendergast novels in particular. But this one was a big disappointment. The story line follows a cheesy and ridiculous theme - vodoo and zombie (btw we are told that the correct spellings are zombii). Although the story comes back to a more believable theme in the end - but by then it was too late. Ironically the story seems to be as cheesy as the movies made by one of the characters in the novel (Estebam). I hope the authors do a better job in the next novel. If the next novel is equally ridiculous then I may seriously contemplate dumping pendergast.
Not Their Best But Still Fun February 7, 2010
Antigone Walsh
I am a big fan of the Pendergast novels. Special Agent Pendergast is one of the more interesting characters to populate the suspense world, sort of an elegant,otherworldly McGyver.
This books opens with the brutal murder of reporter William Smithback and the attack of his wife Nora by a neighbor. There are eyewitnesses galore who identify the neighbor as the perpetrator. Only problem is the neighbor supposedly died two weeks earlier. As the body count rises and the city is on edge, Vincent D'Agosta of the NYPD is joined by Pendergast on an investigation that involves rabid animal activists, a corrupt computer programmer, a secretive cult, a retired Hollywood director along with the usual mob scenes, monsters, police incompetence and politics.
The major flaw in the novel is that it focuses on Vincent D'Agosta. He bumbles his way through the novel being frustrated and angry and oftentimes whiny. He is okay as a sidekick but is not strong enough to carry a novel by himself. Also Nora is reduced to the role of hysterical victim. The ultimate resolution is a bit convoluted but on he other hand it is fiction.
I agree wholeheartedly with the other reviewers who complain that this novel is not up to the authors usual standards. However, it still is entrtaining and worth a read.
animal sacrifice sucks January 1, 2010
lonebeaut (land of enchantment)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I checked this book out of the Santa Fe library hoping to be distracted from all the holiday craziness. I'd just read another book by a local, Cormac McCarthy, so Douglas Preston seemed a reasonable next choice. Although it's no Pulitzer Prize winner, this book performed fairly well, even though the highly contrived plot and the generally wooden characters didn't do much to command my attention. And, as an editor, I can't help but note typos, misspellings and bad syntax. Here are two examples from the hardback (wonder if they were discovered and corrected for the paperback):
Page 318: Could she could feign sickness, . . .
Page 419: His mind reeled as yet again he tried to orient himself amid the endless props, his mind reeling from the pain.
While it's generally competently written, some of the vocabulary reminded me of Dean Koontz at his lah-dee-dah-diest. One gets the feeling that the authors have their handy dandy thesaurus close by as they try to come up with alternate, more gothic-sounding synonyms in an effort to raise the intellectual level of this potboiler, e.g., the word "bloody" is too banal, so they go for "sanguineous". "Boschean" (sp?) is my personal favorite, having taken an art course at the Prado during my college years.
But as an animal rights advocate who has lately done research of my own into animal sacrifice "traditions", the plot actually held some interest. Most people in the 21st century don't realize that primitive, barbaric animal sacrifice is still an active part of some cultures. For example, the Hindus do it, the Muslims do it, the Zulus of South Africa do it, and, of course, the Caribbean area teems with voodoo-type religions that exploit animals to supposedly appease the gods. Sadly, animal sacrifice is also a booming business, with a lot of people profiting off the suffering of these doomed animals. Even in the U.S., the concept of religious freedom largely protects religious animal abusers from prosecution. Often it's misplaced political correctness that prevents animal exploiters from being punished, and that's just not acceptable.
Back to the story. The idea that passive lobotomized people (think Jack Nicholson's character in "One Flew Under the Cuckoo's Nest") can be trained to be violent killers is a little out there. Not to mention the idea that all those disparate animal rights groups would agree to put their ideological differences aside and get together to march, a feat comparable to herding cats. But the authors manage to create a fairly sympathetic figure out of the hapless Richard Plock, the less-than-charismatic but principled and sincere leader of Humans for Animals. They give him a back story of 4-H-brand animal (and child) cruelty that is fairly common among animal advocates. And I like that they made him chubby because there's a prevailing myth that vegans are all skinny. The authors also ensure that Esteban, the villain of the story, a faux vegan/animal rights advocate, is suitably revolting, although his diatribe about not keeping horses imprisoned is something I agree with, since all horses are wild at heart.
In general, a book worth my holiday time.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 161
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