Preston, Douglas 1956–

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Preston, Douglas 1956–

PERSONAL: Born May 20, 1956, in Cambridge, MA; son of Jerome, Jr. (a lawyer) and Dorothy (a professor) Preston; married; wife's name Christine (a photographer); children: Selene, Aletheia, Isaac. Education: Pomona College, B.A., 1978. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Home—Santa Fe, NM. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Warner Books, 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

CAREER: American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, from editor and writer to manager of publications, 1978–86; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, lecturer in English, 1989–90; Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe, NM, research associate; freelance writer. Member of the board, School of American Research, Santa Fe, NM.

MEMBER: PEN New Mexico.

WRITINGS:

Dinosaurs in the Attic (nonfiction), St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1986.

Cities of Gold: A Journey across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado (nonfiction), Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1992.

Jennie, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 1994.

Talking to the Ground: One Family's Journey on Horseback across the Sacred Land of the Navajo, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1995.

(With Jose Antonio Esquibel) The Royal Road: El Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe (travelogue), photographs by Christine Preston, University of New Mexico Press (Albuquerque, NM), 1998.

Thunderhead, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1999.

The Codex (novel), Forge (New York, NY), 2004.

Tyrannosaur Canyon (novel), Forge (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Audubon, Harper's, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Natural History, New Yorker, and Travel & Leisure. Columnist, Natural History, 1979–85. Former managing editor, Curator.

NOVELS, WITH LINCOLN CHILD

Relic, Forge (New York, NY), 1995.

Mount Dragon, Forge (New York, NY), 1996.

Reliquary, Forge (New York, NY), 1997.

Riptide, Warner Books (New York, NY), 1998.

The Ice Limit, G.K. Hall (Thorndike, ME), 2000.

The Cabinet of Curiosities, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Still Life with Crows, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2003.

Brimstone, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2004.

Dance of Death, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2005.

The Book of the Dead, Warner Books (New York, NY), 2006.

ADAPTATIONS: Relic was adapted to film, Paramount, 1997. The Codex, Dance of Death, Still Life with Crows, Brimstone, and Tyrannosaur Crayon are all available as audiobooks.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Other novels by Preston and Child are under development in Hollywood.

SIDELIGHTS: Douglas Preston is a former editor of publications for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Preston's work in this capacity laid the groundwork for many of his novels, books that use the vast reaches of history, the echoing halls of museums, and the tenacity of anthropological, archaeological, and historical research as backdrops for thrillers and stories of suspense. In his Cities of Gold: A Journey across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado, for example, Preston writes extensively about the American Southwest, from its prehistory to battles between Native Americans and white settlers to its changing modern economy. "Holding all these voices and observations together is the narrative of Preston's and his companions' adventures on horseback, in pursuit of Coronado," related Paul Trachtman in a Smithsonian review. "Battered by the assaults of climate and terrain, almost dazed by the grandeur of the mountains they scaled and deserts they cross, these greenhorns survived what more-experienced advisers predicted would probably kill them." The magnificent beauty of the region also emerges from Preston's prose: once, he looked up at a mountain ridge and was shocked to see that it had suddenly begun to liquefy before his eyes. Then, he realized "that the ridge was carpeted with an immense herd of black-tailed deer," who had heard Preston and the others riders approaching and began to flee.

Preston repeated some of that journey, this time in collaboration with his photographer wife, Christine Preston, and Jose Antonio Esquibel, with the 1998 travelogue The Royal Road: El Camino Real from Mexico City to Santa Fe. The authors recount a journey on horseback and by automobile over the legendary El Camino Real. Their trip commemorated the 400th anniversary of first recorded journey on the path in 1598, when European settlers left the Spanish colonial hub at Mexico City and ventured into the American Southwest. As Preston writes, however, the Camino Real was actually thousands of years old and had been used by Native Americans long before this point in its history. Christine Preston's photographs depict the towns and outposts along the way as they appear in modern times.

After he wrote a fictional diary of an African chimpanzee, Jennie, in 1994, Preston began collaborating with an editor at St. Martin's Press, which had published Jennie as well as Dinosaurs in the Attic. The resulting science-fiction thrillers Preston penned with Lincoln Child were an immediate success, and many of them are being prepared for movie adaptations. Indeed, reviewers have often praised the authors' ability to write harrowing, panoramic scenes of suspense that seem destined for the large screen. The first of these works is Relic, published in 1995. Set at a Manhattan museum that is clearly a stand-in for the American Museum of Natural History, the book revolves around a relic of Mbwun, an evil god from South America that was, according to folklore, half man and half reptile. As curators plan a well-publicized gala in which the relic will be introduced as the showpiece of a new exhibit, a series of gruesome murders occurs in the museum's private spaces. Margo Green, a graduate student in anthropology at the museum, teams with a local crime reporter and FBI agent to solve the mystery. Preston won praise for his ability to provide an enticing, behind-the-scenes look at a museum, with a Publishers Weekly reviewer calling Relic a "well-crafted novel [that] offers first-rate thrills and chills."

The next collaboration between Preston and Child is Mount Dragon. The title refers to a top-secret genetic engineering lab run by Brent Copes's biochemical company, Genedyne. His childhood friend, Charles Le-vine, is now a Harvard professor and the leading voice in academia arguing against the genetic engineering that Genedyne undertakes in the name of profit. A third protagonist, Guy Carson, begins work at Mount Dragon on a new DNA mutation that might end influenza forever, but is deadly to anyone who comes into contact with it. After a colleague dies and a government inspector disappears, Carson and Levine team up to halt the potential threat. A Publishers Weekly reviewer deemed the novel a "grand and scary story, with just enough grisly detail to stimulate real-life fears."

Some of the characters that Preston and Child introduced in Relic return in their 1997 novel, Reliquary. Margo Green is now a working anthropologist who finds herself embroiled in a deadly mystery: a series of gruesome homicides, which at first decimated New York City's anonymous homeless dwellers of sewer and subway tunnels, starts to occur above-ground. Some of the city's most prominent citizens become targets, and Green and law-enforcement authorities uncover an entire mutant race living underground, which threatens civilization itself. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found the plot somewhat preposterous, but called the book "high on suspense and tremendous fun in parts, though, especially when exploring the city's nightmare underbelly." Rex E. Klett, writing in Library Journal, called it a "meaty blend of police procedural, thriller, and horror flick."

Another work from Preston and Child is based on an actual mystery: many modern-day fortune hunters believe that on Oak Island off the coast of Nova Scotia lies what may be the lost treasure of Captain Kidd, a cache of Incan gold, or perhaps even the Holy Grail; all attempts to find it have been hampered by a deadly water trap called the Money Pit. Riptide takes place in coastal Maine and involves an adventurers' search for sunken treasure. The protagonists ask the permission of Dr. Marlin Hatch to search near his private island, but other seekers have been stymied by the Water Pit, a two-hundred-foot-deep water well that floods out treasure hunters. A quarter-century earlier, Hatch's father and brother died in it, but executives of the Thalassa Group claim to have found the Pit's three-hundred-year-old cryptogram design. "Machine-gun pacing, startling plot twists and smart use of legend," among other attributes, noted a Publishers Weekly contributor, make it "an exciting boys' adventure tale for adults."

Preston and Child also teamed up for Thunderhead, which opens with archeologist Nora Kelly being stalked in New Mexico. She discovers a letter from her father, who disappeared long ago, that provides clues to Quivira, the City of Gold from Anasazi Indian folklore. She embarks upon a journey to unearth it, but her life is increasingly imperiled as she nears the location. "It's all predictable but rarely dull," according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer, who also praised Preston and Child's ability to create exciting, drawn-out events on the page, describing some incidents here "showcases of action writing." The pair also penned The Ice Limit, which centers around a giant meteorite that has slammed into an island off the coast of Chile. A team of scientists wants to extract it and bring it to New York City harbor, making it the largest object that humankind has ever moved. The Chileans, however, might destroy it rather than lose it. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found The Ice Limit a great escapist book for the beach, calling it "a big-boned thriller, one that will make a terrific summer movie as well as a memorable hot-day read."

In Brimstone, is appears that Satan himself is responsible for the murders of a number of wealthy, powerful, but notoriously repugnant men. The murder scenes include Satanic symbols burned into the walls and floors, the presence of pentagrams, cloven hoof-prints, and the unmistakable smell of brimstone. Investigating the murders are brilliant and sophisticated FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast and hard-edged New York cop Vincent D'Agosta. Narrowing their search from a supernaturally diabolical opponent to a more mundane human antagonist, the cultured Pendergast and streetwise D'Agosta travel through exotic locations, atmospheric European castles, creepy cemeteries, and stoic monasteries in search of the brimstone killer. A scheme to sell illegal weapons to the Chinese and an attempt to recover a missing Stradivarius violin add additional flavor to the plot. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the novel "erudite, swiftly paced, brimming (occasionally over-brimming) with memorable personae and tense set pieces."

Pendergast returns in The Cabinet of Curiosities. In this novel, a Manhattan construction project is abruptly halted when the remains of thirty-six people, all dismembered and apparent victims of a serial killer, are discovered at the construction site. The remains are more than a hundred years old, however, and Pendergast is called in to help discover the identity of the century-old killer. Working with him in this outing is archaeologist Nora Kelly, who previously appeared in Thunder-head. Pendergast uncovers evidence that the killer used living body parts to create an elixir that allegedly would allow him to live forever. The investigation hits a snag when a number of similar new murders occur, and Pendergast and Kelly face the possibility that their target might still be operating—and killing—after more than a century. Library Journal contributor Rebecca House Stankowski called the book an "absolutely terrific thriller." The novel's "mix of suspense and archaeology is sure to please the thriller crowd," commented David Pitt in Booklist.

Still Life with Crows finds Pendergast investigating a strange and grisly murder in rural Kansas, where a mutilated body has been found tied to stakes in a cornfield. Pendergast believes the elaborate killing is the work of a serial killer, but he will have to uncover a host of long-hidden secrets in the local town of Medicine Creek before finding the killer. Along with local teenage rebel Corrie Swanson, Pendergast delves into matters that some locals would rather have stay hidden. The novel, a "scary campfire chillfest," has "an abundance of traditional suspense novel ingredients," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

Preston has also authored a number of novels by himself. In The Codex, Maxwell Broadbent, a wealthy antiquities collector, sends for his three sons. When they arrive at his mansion, they find him, and his priceless antique collection, missing. A videotape from Broadbent informs them that to reap the rewards of their inheritance they must locate him and his collection of artifacts. He recommends they work together, but the three ignore this advice and begin their individual searches. One son is approached by a woman who wants to help him in his search in order to find a book she calls the Codex, a Mayan book of phenomenally effective herbal remedies and medicines that could redefine the world pharmaceutical industry. When the location of their father's treasure is narrowed down to Honduras, the three sons embark on a tense chase to find their parent and his hidden riches.

Tyrannosaur Canyon is another solo novel by Preston. When veterinarian Tom Broadbent runs into a badly gunshot-wounded man in the northern New Mexican desert, the man refuses help and instead asks Broadbent to ensure that his daughter receives his notebook, which is filled with curious, coded writings. Acting on the dead prospector/fossil hunter's last wish, Broadbent goes to great lengths to deliver the notebook, in the process endangering himself and his family. As the case unfolds, Broadbent discovers that he is being stalked by the hired gun of a malignant British paleontologist on the hunt for a perfectly preserved, and incredibly valuable, specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex. A Publishers Weekly critic called the book an "improbable thriller" and "lively yet ridiculous."

Preston resumes his longtime collaboration with Child in Dance of Death. FBI agent Pendergast returns in this novel, this time hunting a brutal serial killer with the assistance of colleague Vincent D'Agosta and his sternly professional girlfriend, who is in charge of the case. The investigators race to stop the killer's murderous rampage, but as the case develops, evidence points not to an anonymous criminal but to Pendergast's brother, Diogenes, the brilliant opposite of Pendergast whose prodigious intellect and mastery of technology is instead directed to evil purposes.

Preston once told CA: "I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating from college, I moved to New York City, where I worked for the American Museum of Natural History. Here, as an editor and writer, I spent much of my time poking around the six-hundred-thousand square feet of storerooms and secret vaults at the museum. My first book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, told about the scientists, explorers, and eccentrics who assembled the vast collections at the museum. I moved to the Southwest in 1987. My interest in the history of exploration led me to attempt an understanding of that moment when the peoples of the Old World and the New World first met in what would become the United States. I undertook a thousand-mile journey by horseback across the American Southwest, retracing the search of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado for the Seven Cities of Gold. This resulted in the book Cities of Gold."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 1994, Barbara Duree, review of Jennie, p. 25; December 1, 1994, Carl Hays, review of Relic, p. 635; February 1, 1996, William Beatty, review of Mount Dragon, p. 918; March 15, 1997, Dennis Winters, review of Reliquary, p. 1205; May 15, 1999, Roland Green, review of Riptide, p. 1565; May 15, 2000, David Pitt, review of The Ice Limit, p. 1702; June 1, 2002, David Pitt, review of The Cabinet of Curiosities, p. 1692.

Library Journal, May 1, 1997, Rex E. Klett, review of Reliquary, p. 143; June 15, 1997, Juleigh Muirhead, review of Reliquary, p. 114; June 15, 1998, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of Riptide, p. 108; June 1, 2002, Rebecca House Stankowski, review of The Cabinet of Curiosities, p. 197; December 1, 2004, Joseph L. Carlson, audiobook review of The Codex, p. 180; October 1, 2005, Joseph L. Carlson, review of Dance of Death, p. 120.

Publishers Weekly, December 5, 1994, review of Relic, p. 67; January 8, 1996, review of Mount Dragon, p. 59; March 3, 1997, review of Reliquary, p. 64; May 18, 1998, review of Riptide, p. 69; May 31, 1999, review of Thunderhead, p. 64; June 5, 2000, review of The Ice Limit, p. 74; October 6, 2003, audiobook review of Still Life with Crows, p. 28; July 5, 2004, review of Brimstone, p. 36; July 18, 2005, review of Tyrannosaur Canyon, p. 185.

Smithsonian, April, 1993, Paul Trachtman, review of Cities of Gold: A Journey across the American Southwest in Pursuit of Coronado, p. 159.