Relic - Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

[kooshmeister]

The Amazon, 1987. An anthropology expedition sent by the Museum of Natural History in New York has hit the skids. Their efforts to find the long-lost Kothoga tribe have turned up nothing. Well, almost nothing. They did find a hut lined with human skulls and an idol of a creature evidently known as Mbwun ("He Who Walks on All Fours"), complete with an overgrown garden full of strange plants, but as fascinating as that is, it's only evidence that the Kothoga existed at one point, not, as team leader Dr. Julian Whittlesey had hoped, evidence that the tribe still flourishes in secret. Even an elderly native woman who emerges to yell at the white men for messing around with stuff they don't understand isn't much help; she's from a tribe that the expedition already knows about, the Yanomamo.

Satisfied with the plant specimens, the acerbic Dr. Edward Maxwell has packed up and left to return to the coast, taking most of the team with him, leaving Whittlesey to ponder over the Mbwun figurine, with only two assistants, Carlos and Crocker, and a couple of guides to keep him company. But even that small group soon begins dwindling. The guides desert the first chance they get, and then Crocker wanders off and disappears. Concerned, Whittlesey packs everything up - his journal, the figurine and some other odds and ends, using some of the plant life Maxwell was so excited about as packing material - and instructs Carlos to take it and hurry and catch up with Maxwell while he goes on to find Crocker alone (and perhaps, he hopes, still find the Kothoga). Carlos is reluctant, but eventually obeys.

Whittlesey continues alone and does indeed find Crocker. Or at least what's left of him. He's been savagely mauled, his head torn off. The corpse is barely recognizable as human. Startled by a noise in the jungle behind him, Whittlesey turns...

...and we cut to one year later in a seaside Brazilian town, where a smuggler with the unlikely name of Stevenson Stevens (he goes by "Ven") has been using some old crates in a dockside warehouse to hide his contraband behind. The crates are from Whittlesey and Maxwell's expedition and have been mired in bureaucratic red tape at the docks ever since Maxwell and almost everyone else who came out of the jungle died in a plane crash on their way back to the states... and two men, Whittlesey and Crocker, never returned from the jungle at all. But now the red tape is all cleared up and the crates are due to be shipped to New York by way of New Orleans, meaning Ven is going to have to get his stash out of there quick before the already suspicious dock foreman has the creates moved and finds his stuff. Entering the dark warehouse, he's just reached his hiding spot when he suddenly realizes he isn't alone in the building anymore. Something big and very smelly is in there with him. He barely has time to process this before something rushes out of the darkness and kills him in an exceptionally violent manner. It looks like the expedition's crates are about to be mired in more red tape from the ensuing police investigation once the grisly mess that used to be Ven Stevens is found...

Flash-forward to 1994. It's a bustling day at the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Little Billy Bridgeman and his younger brother have wandered away from their parents in search of the dinosaur exhibit, which has evidently been moved to make away for a new exhibit that's due to open in a few days. The kids don't know what the exhibit is about and they don't care. They want dinosaurs, damn it! Or at least Billy does. His brother is growing increasingly whiny and insistent that they return to their parents. Refusing to listen, Billy decides that the best way to find the dinosaurs is to start from where they used to be, entering the new exhibit, which is currently closed to the public, evading the watchful eyes of museum security. His brother, for lack of anything better to do, follows him. Heading to an area of the new exhibit that is not supposed to be seen by visitors, the boys quickly get lost in a maze of maintenance hallways terminating in an old metal staircase leading downwards.

This is way cooler than dinosaurs (what Billy does and doesn't focus on changes every few seconds; he has a short attention span). Against the advice of his sibling, he heads down the stairs. And never comes back up. Sitting and waiting at the top for him to return, his brother eventually decides to go retrieve him so they won't get in trouble, and descends down into the darkness...

The following day, Margo Green, a research assistant working in the evolutionary biology department under the renowned but slightly eccentric Dr. Frock, comes to work to find the museum swarming with police. Her co-worker Dr. Greg Kawakita tells her that evidently there's been a murder. Museum employee Charlie Prine found the body. Or bodies, rather. Margo glimpses Prine being led away by the police, looking thoroughly traumatized, his shoes covered in blood. Evidently the bodies were in quite a nasty state. Lead investigator Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta gathers all the museum's employees in one room and explains that there have in fact been killings, but he doesn't divulge the identities or the victims or how they died (though methinks the Bridgeman brothers met with a bad end after going down those stairs). This is a lot for Margo to process, especially since she's still grieving from the recent death of her father and having to deal with her somewhat overbearing mother's demands that she quit working at the museum and come take over the Green family business, a decision Margo needs to come to soon or else the Greens will lose everything. Greg, though properly horrified at the thought of grisly murders, is mostly concerned that the NYPD's investigation will disrupt his work on the Gene Sequence Extrapolator (or "G.S.E." or just "the Extrapolator" for short), an idea of Dr. Frock's he is trying very hard to make a reality. His fears are confirmed when D'Agosta says that the police won't be leaving the museum until they're 100% sure the killer or killers are no longer lurking anywhere on the premises.

Meanwhile, reporter Bill Smithback, hired by museum public relations director Lavinia Rickman to write a book about the new exhibit that's about to open, smells a story, and isn't going to let anything as simple as his boss' insistence about "avoiding controversy" deter him from finding out who got killed and how...

[kooshmeister]

After the police finally let the employees go, Margo reports to Dr. Frock's office. Frock is your basic absentminded professor type with kooky theories, complete with being confined to a wheelchair (due to a bout with polio as opposed to old age). He has this notion he calls the Callisto Effect, which posits the existence of short-lived aberrant species who are around so briefly they leave no fossil evidence. Well, almost no fossil evidence; Frock has what he claims is the fossilized footprint of one such creature displayed in his office. It's often lambasted as "Frock's Folly" by other scientists who don't take the good Doctor's theories seriously. He's hoping the Extrapolator can help prove his theory by showing hypothetical intermediate species based on DNA samples.

As for Margo, her work for Frock just involves writing a paper about plants. Exciting.

At the medical examiner's office, Lieutenant D'Agosta has the dubious honor of sitting in on the murdered Bridgeman boys' autopsy. Dr. Mathilda Ziewicz's examination of what little is left of poor little Billy Bridgeman reveals his chest was slashed viciously by something very sharp. Three very sharp somethings, to be precise. In addition, both he and his brother had their heads torn off and their brains removed. Both brains are missing their hypothalamus gland, and it's Ziewicz's theory that the killer ate them. Further probing of Billy's chest cavity also reveals a broken off piece of what appears to be a claw.

The claw is sent to a police lab for analysis. Lab technician Dr. Lewis Turow is surprised to discover it contains a mixture of human and gecko DNA of all things...

Back at the museum, director Dr. Winston Wright and chief of security Ippolito hold a press conference where the identities of the victims are revealed. We also learn what the new exhibit is going to be about: primitive superstitions. It's even called Superstition (Rickman must've wracked her brain all night to come up with that name). And, no, Superstition is going ahead as planned, dead kids or no dead kids. Dr. Wright's attempt to field questions from the reporters quickly goes sideways; evidently there's long been rumors about something called the "Museum Beast," a kind of boogeyman type creature said to roam the long abandoned sub-basements of the building. In addition, a lot of New Yorkers have got it into their heads that the museum keeps a menagerie of live animals, and, if not the Museum Beast, then it is thought that one of this non-existent animals such as a lion or a tiger (or a bear, oh my!) got loose and is what killed the Bridgeman boys.

Denying both the Beast's existence as well as that the museum keeps any live animals big enough to harm humans, Wright declares the press conference over and he and Ippolito storm off.

Meanwhile, D'Agosta and two of his men accompany dog handlers Jonathan Hamm and his assistant into the bowels of the museum, hoping their dogs Castor and Pollux can pick up the killer's scent and track him down. At first it doesn't go well, with the dogs running around in circles due to all the confusing smells in the place. But eventually Castor and Pollux do pick up a scent, and it gets them going so strongly that Hamm and his fellow handler are unable to prevent the dogs from running off down the dark tunnel.

There's a yelp. The assembled men tense, D'Agosta's men cocking their shotguns. When something comes rushing out of the darkness, they reflexively blast away, and much to the shock and horror of the dog handlers it turns out to be Pollux. The officer who shot him meekly apologizes. D'Agosta and a sullen Hamm proceed deeper into the tunnel and find Castor having been torn to bits. There's no sign of whatever attacked him, though; just a bad smell lingering in the air. As far as D'Agosta is concerned, this proves the killer is still in the museum.

That night, security guard Fred Jolley sneaks outside into a courtyard to smoke a joint. Upon returning through a dimly-lit stairwell, he is attacked by something. The last thing he experiences is the sensation of having his own guts ripped out.

The body is discovered in the courtyard the next day by another guard, Eric Norris, who contaminates the crime scene when he walks through the blood. He gets thoroughly reamed by an enraged D'Agosta. Jolley is in much the same condition as the Bridgeman brothers; torso gutted, head wrenched off, and the brain removed. To get the brain out, the killer removed the entire top of Jolley's skull. Upon seeing it lying on the ground with the dead guard's distinctive crewcut hairstyle still perfectly intact and neat, D'Agosta finally loses it and barfs up his breakfast.

It's at this point that we're introduced to a new character, Special Agent Pendergast of the FBI. He has a thick Southern accent and evidently hails from New Orleans. Or at least he claims he's from the Bureau's New Orleans field office. He came to New York after reading about how the Bridgeman boys were killed. Evidently, the killer's M.O. reminded Pendergast and his superiors of some unsolved murders from down South a few years back, and he's been sent to see if there's any connection. And as far as he's concerned, upon seeing the mess that used to be Fred Jolley, they are connected. Despite some initial suspicion from D'Agosta that the Feds are going to take over, he and Pendergast hit it off pretty well and quickly form an easy and mutually respectful working relationship.

They and Ippolito follow a blood trail through another door, figuring that's where the murderer went after killing Jolley. The trail peters out at a locked area with a heavily reinforced door which Ippolito explains is a secure storage area for some of the museum's more valuable artifacts. Dents in the metal show that someone, likely the killer, tried and failed to get in. At Pendergast's insistence, Ippolito opens the room up. Trying to figure out what the killer might've been after, Pendergast is told by Ippolito that the only thing moved into the secure area recently were some old shipping crates from a doomed Amazonian expedition back in the 80s (aha!). To hear Ippolito tell it, when the crates finally arrived after being held for years, first in Brazil and then in New Orleans, the staff glanced inside, decided there was really nothing worth putting on display, and stuck them in storage. However, a few days ago, assistant director Dr. Ian Cuthbert got the idea to include the Mbwun figurine Whittlesey found in the new exhibit, and when he went to retrieve it, he noticed someone had been messing with the crates. Taking the figure, he had Ippolito move everything else into the secure area. This strikes Pendergast and D'Agosta as suspicious; if the Mbwun figurine was the only thing of any real value, why did Cuthbert bother having everything else put somewhere super safe? Ippolito isn't sure.

Nevertheless, Pendergast begins to wonder if he and D'Agosta might not do some digging into the old expedition, especially considering the crates came into the States by way of New Orleans, where all those murders happened. Besides, if he can figure out what the expedition was trying to accomplish, he can figure out what, if anything, is in those crates that the killer might be after.

[Swampirella]

Thanks for taking the time to post these; they're a lot of fun!

[pulphack]

I've never said it often enough (maybe once, actually) but I love it when the Koosh gets going on these. I suspect that his retellings are a lot more fun than some of the books or tv he's written about. They're superb. I can't wait to find out what happens next (though I suspect it involves more plot convolutions than there are grisly killings).

[humgoo]

Sept 9, 2021 5:37:01 GMT pulphack said:

I suspect that his retellings are a lot more fun than some of the books or tv he's written about.

I'm pretty sure they are ... and you can say the same about Dem's synopses.

[pulphack]

True, but whereas Dem is quite gnomic in utterance, the Koosh goes full-on raconteur.

[kooshmeister]

Word spreads. People talk. It isn't long before Dr. Frock learns that the victims have been slashed by something with claws. More than the removal and partial consumption of the brains, the old scientist focuses on this, insisting it's proof of his theory about aberrant species. How it got into the museum, though, that he has no answer for. Except for Margo Green, he doesn't tell this theory to anyone. Margo mostly humors him because she needs his patronage if she's going to get her PhD. She continues studying her plants and avoiding calls from her mother.

Bill Smithback's efforts to include mention of the killings in the book he's writing are shot down by Lavinia Rickman, who reminds him of their agreement: nothing controversial which could potentially harm the museum's reputation. He repeatedly vents his frustrations to Margo over drinks. As if she doesn't have enough to worry about between the grisly deaths, her mother breathing down her neck and having to handle her boss' weird theory that the murderer is some kind of mutant dinosaur, now she's suddenly Bill Smithback's sympathetic ear.

Smithback's whining will have to wait, because the authorities suddenly want to talk to Dr. Frock down in the secure storage area near where Fred Jolley was killed. Agent Pendergast wants to meet him in the secure storage area and Margo has to push his wheelchair down to meet them (through the hallways, onto the elevator and then down more hallways, I mean, although the mental image of Margo just shoving Frock's wheelchair down the same stairwell Jolley was killed in is morbidly hilarious). Upon getting there, Pendergast shows Frock a cast made of the thing used to leave the three ragged claw marks down Billy Bridgeman's chest - a big three-fingered saurian claw (dino-saurian, Frock emphasizes). Although he sees this as further proof of his theories, Frock keeps his ideas to himself and mostly lets Pendergast do the talking; the FBI agent is one to monologue quite a bit.

It's Pendergast's tentative theory that the killer is using an artifact that's either carved into the shape of a monstrous clawed hand, or perhaps something taxidermied together from different animals. Due to the recovered piece of claw from the Bridgeman boys' autopsy being real and not man-made, he's leaning towards the latter. He wants to know if such an artifact is missing from the museum. Frock assures him one isn't. As does Ian Cuthbert, who storms onto the scene and starts angrily demanding to know what headway the FBI agent and his NYPD colleagues are making. If any. The Superstition exhibit needs to open, damn it, and he is there to convey Dr. Wright's very strong insistence that the killer(s) be captured by then. He also doesn't seem to want them anywhere near the secure storage room and kicks everyone out.

Pendergast's response to this is to march upstairs to Wright's office with D'Agosta in tow (the Lieutenant has found he really likes watching Pendergast work) and read the museum director the riot act, threatening to close down the entire museum and cancel the grand opening of Superstition if he and his cronies won't cooperate with him and stop constantly pestering him for results. He evidently has the authority to do it, too; he threatens to phone the attorney general. A browbeaten Wright relents, but vows that Pendergast isn't the only one with friends in high places, a fact he'll put to use in order to get Pendergast out of his hair if it comes to it.

Meanwhile, before they got thrown out by Cuthbert, Margo wheeled Frock into the room where the crates from the old Amazon expedition are kept. Cuthbert grudgingly allowed it. Indeed, per what was said by Ippolito earlier, there wasn't much in the crates of particular interest. Just some plant specimens, more old, dried plant material evidently used as packing fiber by the expedition, and some random relics. The most eye-catching was a carved medallion showing the Kothoga tribe harvesting some plants from a pond or river. There was also a handwritten note from Julian Whittlesey, addressed to some guy named Montague. Margo stole it, and she, Frock and Smithback read it later. In the note, Whittlesey complains about Dr. Maxwell being a constant irritation but nevertheless hopes those stupid plant specimens Dr. Jerk was so excited about will make someone named Jörgensen very happy. Jörgensen? Montague? Who are those guys...? No one present has ever even heard of them. Even Maxwell's name rings no bells. And Frock only vaguely remembers Julian Whittlesey.

But forget about them for now, because the note mentions a certain journal. It is said to be packed in with everything else. But where is it? No sign of it. The note stresses that Whittlesey hopes Montague (whoever he is) will read it. That means Margo, Frock and Smithback think they ought to read it, too. Since everything catalogued into the museum's archives is kept listed on computers, they figure they'll easily be able to find out where the journal is being kept. No dice. All they can find is evidence that it exists, just not where it is. The data entry about when it was checked out and by who is password protected. As a curator, Dr. Frock figures he should have no problem getting higher clearance in order to track down who currently has the book... but one angry phone call with Cuthbert later ends with him being denied that access.

In the meantime, the universe keeps heaping joy after joy upon Margo. Superstition's arrangement is being handled by Dr. George Moriarty, one of Cuthbert's top assistant curators. He's a shy, polite introvert who wears a wristwatch patterned after an antique sundial, and he's also got a weird, kinda stalker-y crush on Margo. But perhaps the universe finally handed Margo Green a bit of good luck. After all, in addition to being on the inside where Superstition is concerned, Moriarty is also evidently a computer genius. Surely an assistant curator who is in Cuthbert's good graces, who knows his way around computers can help them find out who checked Whittlesey's journal. Especially if the request comes from the pretty research assistant he's got a crush on. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

Regarding Moriarty handling Superstition, even though the whole thing was Cuthbert and Rickman's idea, evidently neither of them can be bothered to actually oversee its development. The closest Cuthbert has come to contributing anything meaningful was the last minute addition of the Mbwun figurine as one of the centerpieces...

...a decision Rickman apparently privately disagreed with. The more and more our protagonists learn about all the decisions surrounding the exhibit and those old crates, the more and more they begin to suspect something sinister is afoot. Smithback in particular can feel his reporter senses tingling. Without knowing it, he and Margo are on the same track as Pendergast and D'Agosta; trying to learn more about Julian Whittlesey's doomed expedition. Just what are the museum's head honchos trying to hide?

[kooshmeister]

Got caught up reading Reliquary, the sequel to this. Fear not, though. I'll return to Relic ASAP. As regards Reliquary, while a decent enough sequel that feels like a natural continuation, I didn't like it as much (although I still devoured it in one evening; even Relic's mediocre sequel is a page-turner).

In addition, I also found the script for the movie (or a draft of it, anyway), and, curiously, it appears as if all the weird name changes and other alterations made to the story came at a late date; the copy I found changes Whittlesey's first name to John, calls the mayor Jordan instead of Harper and makes Pendergast black and drastically compresses the timeline much like the final film did, but still has most of the characters with their proper names (i.e., Greg Kawakita and not Greg Lee, Ippolito and not Tom Parkinson, etc.). In fact, the main thing I found weird about the script is that although the names are the same, there's a lot of name shuffling. Even though the novel had no shortage of named security guards, the script made virtually every named police officer character (Beauregard, Waters, McNitt, etc.) into museum security instead of NYPD. It's very bizarre. NYPD Officer Beauregard, a character I haven't even gotten to in my summary yet, is the first victim in the script rather than Fred Jolley.

Since I'm so fascinated by this kinda stuff, once I finish my summary of the novel, I'll follow it up with one for the script and then the final version of the film in order to compare and contrast before eventually moving on to Reliquary.

[andydecker]

Sept 12, 2021 14:44:03 GMT kooshmeister said:

Reliquary, the sequel to this. Fear not, though. I'll return to Relic ASAP. As regards Reliquary, while a decent enough sequel that feels like a natural continuation, I didn't like it as much (although I still devoured it in one evening; even Relic's mediocre sequel is a page-turner).

Have similar memories. At the time this was a popular topic, I seem to remember, homeless people living underground, catacombs under New York and so on. Can't remember why I didn't like it, but there seemed something missing.

Can't believe that there are 20 novels in this series. 25 years - not bad. After Koosh's introduction I read a bit about them at your usual sources. Now I remember why I lost interest. The brother of the hero is a evil mastermind in later books, then the wife gets kidnapped or murdered, both are trilogies. I have zero interest in this constellation.

[kooshmeister]

Margo persuades George Moriarty to get the deleted file for her. It turns out Lavinia Rickman was the last person to check out the journal, and that she did so with Cuthbert's authorization. Moriarty's price for his cooperation is that Margo write some copy for the exhibition about plants used in primitive rituals. All things considered, considering the guy's crush on her, Margo isn't paying too steeply for the guy's cooperation. He could've asked for a lot of worse things.

After she leaves, Moriarty, feeling guilty about going behind Cuthbert's back, decides to go for a walk. He enjoys cataloguing stuff, which is one reason Cuthbert headhunted him to organize Superstition, so his idea of relaxing is going down into the storage areas and sifting through boxes of stuff to see if he can find anything interesting.

After Margo finished writing the copy, she goes to give it to Moriarty, but he isn't in his office. Not knowing about his sojourn to the storage area, Margo figures he must be in the exhibit itself. She heads down there to give him the paper. The entrance to the exhibit is in the museum's main lobby, called the Hall of the Heavens. Although there's supposed to be a police officer on duty in the lobby, the place is deserted when Margo arrives. Figuring he must inside discussing something with Moriarty, she enters the exhibit. It's more like a haunted house attraction than a museum exhibit, and definitely appeals more to the common man's taste for the sensational than the intellectual's taste for the academic. Everything is overly stylized and heavily sensationalized.

But no Moriarty and no policeman. Where are they?

Margo heads deeper into the rather large exhibit. Since they put the thing where the dinosaur exhibit used to be, you can imagine it's rather large. And at the center of it all is the idol of Mbwun, whose description on its big decorative display stand gives us a little bit more info on the creature, which we've heard precious little about. It was a creature the Kothoga both revered and feared. Evidently, it was the son of a dark and evil god the tribe made a pact with in order to destroy their enemies. So the legend goes, the tribe killes all their children and in return were sent Mbwun, who did indeed kill their enemies... but didn't stop there. It also killed members of tribes friendly to the Kothoga, and eventually some of their number as well. When the outraged and grief-stricken Kothoga cried to their god and demanded to know why his son had done these evil things, evidently their god simply laughed and asked them what did they expect? He's evil.

It's while she's absorbing this creepy information that Margo realizes she isn't alone in the exhibit. Someone or something is in there with her. She can sense a strange presence, kind of like how even without turning around you can tell someone has walked into the room with you. You just know that they have. And there's also the smell. The stench. And the heavy breathing. And the sound of something very large moving amongst the display cases. Deciding George Moriarty can pick up his fucking copy at the front desk, Margo runs out, terrified, and runs smack dab into Officer Fred Beauregard, the cop who was supposed to be on duty in the lobby. Evidently he considered guarding the front entrance beneath him and wandered off, bored, his mind on the fishing trip he's going on as soon as he gets off duty.

Margo babbles about there being someone in the exhibit, then, after the officer manages to calm her down, he explains it's probably Dr. Moriarty, though he admits he didn't see him go in. Nevertheless, he agrees to check things out. Margo thanks him, leaves what she wrote for Moriarty on the front desk, and goes home, shaken by her experience.

Beauregard goes to the Superstition entrance. When he calls out, nobody answers. Nevertheless, something doesn't sit quite right with him about the situation. He radios for backup. Unfortunately for him, the two guys on duty assisting the guards in the museum security control room are jerks. After the usual mockery and ribbing from his "friends" about him getting spooked by strange noises, they eventually agree to send someone to come and help. But they're a little too long in coming for Beauregard's taste. Drawing his gun, he enters the exhibit alone...

A few minutes later, Officer McNitt arrives and finds Beauregard's post deserted. He's shortly followed by Officer Effinger. They wait around, but don't actually go into the exhibit (evidently it's supposed to be off limits to everyone except museum personnel until it opens, something Beauregard Beaure-disregarded when he went in). Eventually, they decided he was just jerking them around before going off duty, and McNitt returns to the control room, leaving Effinger to watch the lobby, muttering about what a jerk that Beauregard is...

Smithback does some digging around in the museum's archives and manages to find the name of the ship that the crates were sent to the US on, the Strella de Venezuela, which sailed from Belem, Brazil to New Orleans following an additional year of being held up (due to, we know, Ven Stevens' death and the investigation surrounding it). Hmm, thinks Smithback, reporter senses tingling. New Orleans. Isn't that where Pendergast is from? And where he says all the weirdly identical murders occurred? From the shipping info, Smithback figures out when the Strella de Venezuela was supposed to have docked in New Orleans and so looks up old newspapers from around that time to see if he can find anything that might connect the ship to the murders.

He hits paydirt. Not only is the Strella de Venezuela connected to the murders, it's where the first victims were found. According to an article he finds, everyone aboard the ship was killed. And although the paper is of course light on details, Smithback is positive that every single member of the Strella de Venezuela's crew died in the exact same way as Fred Jolley and the Bridgeman boys.

He also hunts up the names in Whittlesey's letter, but the only one he can find any record of is Jörgensen, who it turns out is Dr. Jörgensen, a botanist still employed at the museum. Sort of. Although he's still receiving a paycheck and has an office, it seems the powers that be have shuffled him quietly aside and he's had basically nothing to do for the last several years. In fact, when Margo goes with Smithback to talk to Jörgensen, they only even find him in his office because he's using the museum's lab to fix his vacuum cleaner. He has done no research, his job is a joke, and, why, yes, he'd love to talk about Julian Whittlesey and that doomed expedition.

For starts, who are Maxwell and Montague? We know Maxwell is Edward Maxwell, and that he was a huge asshole who basically abandoned Whittlesey and the others so he could return as quickly as possible with his precious plant specimens, and then died in a plane crash. So much Jörgensen explains. As for Montague, he's Hugo Montague, a grad student who worked for Whittlesey and didn't go on the trip.

About the expedition. In the first place, Jörgensen was originally supposed to go, but got kicked off the team by Maxwell, who forced his way in thanks to his connections with the museum's head honcho, a certain Dr. Winston Wright. Ironically, Maxwell getting him kicked off the team ended up saving Jörgensen's life; if he'd gone, he would've either died in the jungle or in the crash coming back. Anyway, so not only did the expedition have a rocky start thanks to Maxwell inserting himself and throwing his weight around, but the team was under a time crunch; the plateau where Whittlesey thought the Kothoga might still exist turned out to be rich in some kind of valuable mineral, probably gold, and a Brazilian mining company was planning to develop the site. Which is a euphemism for "strip mine the fucking place." Consequently, Whittlesey didn't have enough time to properly plan; the group just rushed in.

In fact, because the mining company was preparing the develop the region, the Americans weren't even supposed to be there; they snuck in illegally and took a longer and more dangerous trail than they would've had to if they'd gotten the proper permits (permits the government was unwilling to have given them, of course). All of this is yet another reason why the damn crates were tied up in so much red tape at that dockside warehouse for years.

Anyway, the rest Margo and Smithback already know. Sort of. Jörgensen of course explains how Whittlesey and Crocker never came out of the jungle and everyone else perished in the crash. Because of this and the death of Stevens the smuggler and everyone aboard the Strella de Venezuela, there was talk of a curse on the Mbwun figure Whittlesey found. As a result, Wright and Cuthbert were hesitant to exhibit anything sent in the creates until recently.

As for Hugo Montague, Margo and Smithback would very much like to speak with him. Jörgensen says they're not alone; a lot of people want to find him. Long before either of them came to work at the museum, Montague went down to where the crates had been stored (in the regular area as opposed to secure one) and vanished. No one has seen or heard from him since, and to hear Wright tell it, he quit his job and went off to do... whatever it is grad students who get wanderlust do.

Now, our protagonists realize they really need to get their hands on that journal.

[kooshmeister]

Smithback is able to get the journal from Rickman's office and at first it doesn't seem very enlightening. Our heroes begin to wonder what was so darn special about the book. Margo and Smithback go down to the secure storage area for another peek at the crates. While Smithback distracts the guard, Margo is able to nab some a few items from the crates; the medallion from Whittlesey's crate and some of the plant specimens from Maxwell's.

In the meantime, we find out that the evil trio of Wright, Cuthbert and Rickman knew all about the Museum Beast all along, or at least suspected it, and have kept the entire thing hush-hush ever since. And Hugo Montague isn't missing, he's dead; they had what was left of him gotten rid of, covered the whole thing up and made it seem like Montague just quit his job. Tired of that irritating FBI agent and his safety measures, Wright calls the governor, an old college friend, and the governor calls the FBI's New York field office.

Pendergast suddenly finds himself demoted to a purely advisory position on the case as the Bureau sends in Special Agent Spencer Coffey to handle the case. Coffey is an ambitious social climber who hopes that catching the museum murderer will advance his career; he has his eye becoming director of the New York field office. D'Agosta chafes under his leadership. Superstition will go ahead as planned, and Coffey won't even let D'Agosta's men do a preliminary sweep of the exhibit for security purposes. Nobody's been in there since Moriarty signed off on its completion (they don't know about Margo's little jaunt and then Officer Beauregard venturing inside and not coming back out) and that's the way Wright intends for it to stay until the esteemed Mayor Harper and other hoity-toity guests get there. Coffey's second in command Agent Slade isn't much help; he mostly just does whatever his boss tells him. And as if in ominous portent of things to come, as night falls, a violent thunderstorm approaches.

Coffey is confident. The museum has state of the art security. As designer Tom Allen explains, the museum is divided into different sections or "cells" and anti-theft security doors close in the event of one of the exhibits being disturbed or taken, preventing would-be thieves from exiting the building with their prize. Coffey's idea is to close all of these doors except those leading into and out of the "cell" where the Hall of the Heavens and the Superstition exhibit are. The way he figures it, they'll only have to watch one entrance. Both D'Agosta and Pendergast tell him this is a bad, bad, bad idea. What if the killer turns up among the crowd at the party? It'll be difficult to get everyone out quickly and safely if they all have to be funneled through one door. Their objections fall on deaf ears. D'Agosta ensures that one of his men, Garcia, remains in the security control room with Allen, while he goes with Ippolito to the party. Coffey and Slade head outside to coordinate security from there, safely protected from the rain by the Great Rotunda. Deciding to go rogue, Pendergast gets the best map of the old tunnels under the building he can find, arms himself with a pistol, dons a hardhat with a flashlight mounted on it, and descends into the netherworld in search of what he still believes to be an ordinary human serial killer. Nobody bothers to stop him. Coffey figures he can get him fired later.

Down in the lab, Margo realizes that the plants the Kothoga are harvesting in the carving on the medallion must be important, so she uses Greg Kawakita's Extrapolator to analyze Maxwell's plant samples. It turns out that the plants are loaded with human DNA (!) and also a ton of hormones similar to those found in human hypothalamus glands. She goes and gets Dr. Frock. The two theorize that the Museum Beast, Mbwun, whatever you wanna call it, is in fact a heretofore undiscovered animal living in the rain forest which survived on the hormone-rich plants and was worshiped by the Kothoga, yadda, yadda, yadda, and everything was hunky-dory until that mining company developed the region, destroying all the plants Mbwun relied upon for survival. But somehow it knew about the fact Whittlesey and Maxwell had sent some back in those crates, and so it's been following them all the way from Brazil, dining occasionally on human hypothalamus glands when getting into the crates without being seen wasn't possible. And then when Cuthbert had the crates locked behind a door even it couldn't batter down, well, it once more turned to the next best thing...

How, exactly, it knew the human scientists were using its favorite food for packing material is something neither Margo nor Frock can quite figure out, but that'll have to wait. All the guests are arriving. As a horrified Frock so succinctly puts it, it'll be like ringing the dinner bell. Margo hurriedly wheels him up to the Hall of the Heavens where everyone is waiting for the exhibit to be unveiled so they can can go in. Smithback is in attendance, and, having decided he really likes caviar, is seemingly determined to singlehandedly go through the caterers' entire supply. Rather than him, though, for some reason Margo and Frock flag down Greg Kawakita, but he writes them off as nutcases. Realizing only Pendergast will listen to them (I'm not sure why they don't try Smithback; he's right there), they find out from someone that he went down into the tunnels, and so Margo wheels Frock down there to go looking for him.

Superstition is unveiled to much excitement... and upon going in, the partygoers immediately find the headless corpse of Officer Beauregard, sprawled on a mummy case, undiscovered because Coffey wouldn't let D'Agosta do the preliminary sweep he wanted. Screaming, the guests begin running out. And because of Coffey's brilliant idea of having only one door in and out of the Hall of the Heavens left open, they're trampling over one another in a desperate attempt to get through the door. Smithback hides under a table. Greg is caught up in the crowd and swept out the door. In their panicked flight, the people knock over and damage various display cases, which the security system interprets as a theft, and the huge door closes, crushing more than a few unlucky people who aren't quick enough, leaving D'Agosta and others trapped in the Hall of the Heavens. Calling the different sections cells turns out to have been very apropos...

[kooshmeister]

At this point, the novel focuses on several different groups of people in and outside the museum, but the main ones are: Pendergast by himself down in the tunnels, Margo and Dr. Frock looking for him, Lieutenant D'Agosta and others (principally Smithback, Mayor Harper, Dr. Wright, Lavinia Rickman and Ippolito) in the Hall of the Heavens trying to find a way out, and Coffey outside trying to get in to help. It cuts back and forth between the different groups, and I'll do my best to recount everything in more or less the correct order.

As if things couldn't get any worse, Officer Waters, the cop assigned to guard the museum's server room, screws up big time. He's alone down there except for a technician he just calls "the geek." Hearing a strange noise, the technician goes to investigate. When he doesn't return, an increasingly nervous Waters cocks his shotgun and follows him. Seeing a shape moving in the darkness, he freaks out and blasts away, realizing too late that it's no monster. Not only does he almost take the poor technician's head off, but he also blows the computer system's generator to bits. It turns out the noise was just the air conditioning unit conking out. Now there's no way to open all those security doors. Not the NYPD's finest hour.

Pendergast is just about to give up his search and is in fact heading back the way he came when he rounds a corner and sees the beast itself at the opposite end of the corridor. It's basically described as being vaguely simian but with a reptilian lower half. Although no tail is described, basically all cover artwork depicts it with one. After taking a moment to process the fact he isn't dealing with a human killer but an actual monster, he ducks into a side room and shuts the door before the thing sees him. At that moment, Margo arrives pushing Frock's wheelchair, the two of them yelling Pendergast's name (if they know, or at least suspect, there's a monster on the loose, why are they yelling?). Mbwun notices them and they make like Pendergast, Margo wheeling Frock into a room and shutting the door. The thing tries to open the door.

Stepping out and drawing his gun, Pendergast opens fire on the thing, but the bullet only grazes its skill. Roaring, Mbwun runs off - towards a stairwell. A quick pow-wow with Margo and Dr. Frock brings Pendergast up to speed and he realizes Mbwun is on its way up to the large collection of yummy brains currently stuck upstairs in the Hall of the Heavens. Margo comes up with the idea to get the remaining plant specimens from the secure storage area and use them to lure the creature away from its human victims; evidently, the plants are so chock full of the hormones the thing needs that human brains pale in comparison.

Back upstairs, everyone is arguing over what to do. A lot of people got trampled to death in the panicky stampede following the discovery of Beauregard's corpse, including McNitt and one of the museum guards, Martini. One guy who got run over is still alive, barely, and one of the guests who's a doctor does his best to tend to him, but he isn't going to make it unless they get him to a hospital. Dr. Wright tries to take charge, but D'Agosta browbeats him into shutting up and letting him run the show. Ippolito, angered over Martini's death, sides with the Lieutenant against Wright. Besides D'Agosta, there's only one other cop in the room, Officer John Bailey. Everyone else is a guest.

Pendergast contacts D'Agosta over a radio and tells him that he can get everyone out through some tunnels, but he'll have to hurry. The storm will ensure that they flood very quickly. A few of the guests, including, of course, Wright, Cuthbert and Rickman, object to this plan, preferring to wait for the authorities to cut through the security door. But that'll take forever and Mbwun is on its way up to them. A few of the snobs scoff at the very idea. Nevertheless, D'Agosta persuades Mayor Harper, who begins trying to talk some of the others into coming with them. A few begins to come over to the "let's get the hell out of here" camp, but Wright and his cronies are among the lone holdouts. They're staying right where they are, thank you very much. Except for Ippolito. As mentioned, he's pissed over the fact his guards have been getting killed and is 100% on Team D'Agosta. As for the hurt guy, they'll have to leave him behind.

Armed with shotguns, D'Agosta, Ippolito and Bailey head to secure the stairwell. Mbwun attacks from above rather than below, and kills Ippolito before bounding past the startled D'Agosta and Bailey and into the Hall of the Heavens where the guests are. Everyone shrinks back in fear against the wall, but, fortunately for them, the monster goes for the aforementioned hurt guy. Everyone watches in horror as Mbwun wrenches his head off, cracks open the skull and begins gobbling up his brain. At that, nobody is willing to remain and wait for the rescue team to cut through the door. Not even Wright's group, though they're still against taking the tunnels, so they head upstairs instead of down, intending to take shelter in Wright's office, where he claims he has a gun. Everyone else - D'Agosta, Smithback, Harper, Bailey and the guests who are still alive - hurries into the stairwell and goes down, guided via the radio by Pendergast using a map of the old tunnels. Already said tunnels are filling up with water from the storm. Finishing up with the guy on the floor, Mbwun pursues the group.