City of Endless Night

By Lincoln Child & Douglas Preston
358 pgs  (Pendergast series #17)

I looked back at my reviews of the last several Preston & Child books and noticed I've been pretty lukewarm about them for quite a while. In fact, I haven't given a book more than three stars since 2013. City of Endless Night finally snapped that streak of mediocrity.

This time around FBI Special Agent Pendergast and NYPD Lieutenant D'Agosta are up against "The Decapitator," a man preying on members of the 1% and taking their heads as trophies. The first victim is Grace Ozmian,the socialite daughter of one of the wealthiest men in New York, whose headless body is discovered in an abandoned warehouse in Queens. But Grace is only the first. Soon headless bodies of other wealthy people begin showing up. The killer possesses a remarkable ability to get through any layer of security his victims have, and to separate them from their head without raising any alarms.

In the press he's given the moniker "The Decapitator" and the accounts of his crimes quickly put the wealthy on high alert. As Pendergast and D'Agosta try to discover who The Decapitator is and stop him, it becomes apparent that Pendergast is also on his list of targets.

As I mentioned before, it's been a long time since Preston and Child have written a book that really delivers. They don't quite hit it out of the park with this one--like they used to so regularly early in the series--but they managed to get in scoring position. Hopefully their best books haven't already been written.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆