Friday, October 14, 2011

Preston and Child

I have read every book by these 2 authors I can get my hands on. I've always been interested in science and these guys are up to the task in their writing. I, who have perhaps read too many books, have grown bored with books in which I know what is going to happen. With these guys you can't guess usually anyway.
They created a sort of James Bond character named Pendergast, but he really isn't like Bond. He reminds you of Bond with his abilities and the fact that he is wealthy and an F.B.I. agent. He is not handsome for one thing and young women don't fall all over his path. What he does is bring the quality of brains to the story.
In one story he meets a girl in a hick town who is the town "Goth" and the town's reject. What can you expect when her mother is a drunk and she has no father and a filthy trailer to call home? At the end of the novel he tells her how he has registered her for school and giving her money which she at first refuses. He then tells her the money was obtained illegally by a member of his family and he wishes to help the family name by doing good deeds with the money. But I am a freak! she cries and he tells her that he is one too and he did well and so could she, but she had to get out of this town, the town was killing her.
I thought it was art, the way he summed everything up that way. Yes Pendergast is a freak, an albino with snow white hair and strange ways and who finds it difficult to say thank you to anyone but he has found a way to live with it. Intelligent people are often freaks. I think he is alluding here to the fact that people tend to pigeonhole you, and she needed to get out of the town to start a new life because you can never get away from your box they put you in. I live in a small town and they have their ways and one must adapt of course. It can cause the worst kind of claustrophobia, my daughter couldn't wait to get out of town in spite of the fact she has dear friends here.
Pendergast chasing murderers, and I am bit tired of them it's the only fiction I can find much of that I like. The attraction is I think that people find it tantalizing that someone they know is in disguise, for someone among them was capable of murder. It's the social mask, what evil does it hide? It appears from the many murders that go unsolved, it hides a lot.