Still Life with Crows (A Pendergast Novel)
by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child
published
June 2004
(first published 2003)
by Warner Books
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binding
Mass Market Paperback, 592 pages
characters
isbn
0446612766
(isbn13: 9780446612760)
description
A small Kansas town has turned into a killing ground. Is it a serial killer, a man with the need to destroy? Or is it a darker force, a curse upon t...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1361)
Read in October, 2007
I think I'm in love with Special Agent Pendergast! Haha! This guy is amazing. He appears to be unflappable. Now, I've only read two of his adventures, so far, but he's just incredible.
Set in Medicine Creek, KS (interesting as I just moved to KS), this story starts off with a particularly gruesome murder and takes off from there. Having spent time in small towns growing up, the local flavor of small-town America is pretty accurate. The overall atmosphere set out in the books during various st...more
Set in Medicine Creek, KS (interesting as I just moved to KS), this story starts off with a particularly gruesome murder and takes off from there. Having spent time in small towns growing up, the local flavor of small-town America is pretty accurate. The overall atmosphere set out in the books during various st...more
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Read in May, 2008
You can't beat Preston and Child for macabre mystery genre. In this book we find Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast arriving mysteriously in Medicine Creek, Kansas. A nowhere town headed nowhere, until the Kansas State University takes an interest in the town as a site to test genetically altered corn.
Unfortunately a series of bizarre murders threatens that plan from ever becoming a reality. Agent Pendergast is in a race to prevent more murders while trying to keep from being run out of town b...more
Unfortunately a series of bizarre murders threatens that plan from ever becoming a reality. Agent Pendergast is in a race to prevent more murders while trying to keep from being run out of town b...more
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Read in February, 2006
I have a little crush on Aloysius Pendergast, I do believe. He's a great character; very Sherlock Holmes-esque, but rather more bizarre -- he makes Sherlock Holmes seem like a normal guy.
Anyhoo, I really enjoyed this; I thought it was a lot better than Brimstone, which is the other Pendergast novel I've read (yes, I know I'm reading them all out of order); the secondary characters were fleshed out nicely, and there was a lot of good humor as the natives of a tiny Kansas town try to fi...more
Anyhoo, I really enjoyed this; I thought it was a lot better than Brimstone, which is the other Pendergast novel I've read (yes, I know I'm reading them all out of order); the secondary characters were fleshed out nicely, and there was a lot of good humor as the natives of a tiny Kansas town try to fi...more
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Read in January, 2006
Medicine Creek Kansas is a dying small farm town whose only businesses are corn fields and a turkey plant. When the sherrif, Dent Hazen, is called to the middle of a cornfield to investigate a murder, he is struck by a tableaux; around the victim are two dozen crows which have been skewered and placed in a circle around the victim on real Indian arrows. Very soon after that, Special Agent Pendergast arrives to investigate. He asks for help from the town goth and misfit, Corrie Swanson. There...more
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Read in November, 2006
"Still Life With Crows" brings FBI Special Agent Pendergast to a quaint town that bares the soul of Americana. Here, Lincold Child and Douglas Preston unravels a mother's love challenging modern society's wrestling with notions of right or wrong. the suspense and mystery of Preston and Child's earlier novel "The Relic" is there as well as the nudge of anthropological twist only both novelists can apply. readers looking for the colors in Caleb Carr's earlier novels on 18th cen...more
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Interesting. I wish Pendergast was a little more likeable but I do like his eerie mysteriousness at the same time. The story was interesting.
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Read in March, 2008
I'm a big fan of horror novels, but there are so many cheesy ones out there that it is sometimes a turn-off. There are also a lot of over-rated horror novels by mega authors who people read for the name alone (the more recent works of Stephen King are the best example of this)
Still Life with Crows renewed my faith that there can still be horror novels that are well-written. Its an exciting tale of horrible murders that are occuring in a town that has never experienced anything so tragic.
As ...more
Still Life with Crows renewed my faith that there can still be horror novels that are well-written. Its an exciting tale of horrible murders that are occuring in a town that has never experienced anything so tragic.
As ...more
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Agent Pendergrast again. This one is quite wierd. Gives a twist on having a villan that only a mother could love.
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Read in January, 2007
A Preston/Child novel featuring Pendergast but...get this...NOT in nyc. This one actually made me sleep with the light on a couple nights. Serial killer in the cornfields, abandoned mines, introduction to cory. Its all in here and its all good.
Incidentally I also decided to start playing a little game with myself with this book...from this one all, for all Preston/Child novels I try my damndest to figure out the mystery before pendergast. He also has that one final twist over me, but sometim...more
Incidentally I also decided to start playing a little game with myself with this book...from this one all, for all Preston/Child novels I try my damndest to figure out the mystery before pendergast. He also has that one final twist over me, but sometim...more
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I love, love, love this author!! Another good book with his FBI character Pendergast.
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Read in November, 2008
At first I thought this book was kinda dragging and the thought of a monster really doing this I thought was stupid. So in the end all the pieces came together---even the reasons why it was much better. Not one of the best pendergast novels though
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Read in May, 2008
Special agent Pendergast is powerful character with whom you can't help but fall in love. I've read some of the other novels out of sequence, however I did read "Brimstone", "Dance of Death: and the "Book of the Dead" in order, and recommend this. Preston & Child are very good together and keep you wanting more. Evil happens in a small Kansas town, and although you want it to be corrupt officials who are trying to get the University of Kansas to come to their town,...more
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Read in March, 2008
One of my favorite Pendergast books so far, Still Life finds our antihero on vacation in Kansas as he investigates (what else?) a string of bizarre murders. The genius of this book is not in the procedural details, but in the prose that paints the strange figure in the dark suit into a Wyeth painting. Seeing the strange wonder of the FBI interact with the regular folks of the FBI gives this book the dark, twisted sense of humor that makes the darker points a little brighter, and the li...more
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