** spoiler alert ** Although I do not own Special Agent Pendergast books, I have read several from the library. It occurred to me this time why I so enjoy the character. He reminds me very much in temperament and intellect of
Lord Peter Wimsey, the aristocrat who does a bit of "detectin'" in the Dorothy L. Sayers novels of the '20s and '30s. So much that I find myself startled by the mention of modern things like jets, cell phones, computers and DNA labs in the Preston novels.

In this novel we learn Pendergast's wife may well have been murdered instead of dying in what seems a ghastly incident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Twelve years later, Pendergast sets himself on the road of rediscovery as he learns that, while he had given his all to his wife, there are many things about herself she did not share.

Wealthy enough to enlist a bemused police detective to work solely for him in a personal case he says he may have to give a year to solving, Pendergast throws himself and the detective into it wholly. It is all or nothing for Pendergast--he MUST know.

And so must we.