★ 10/23/2023

Bestseller Preston (The Lost City of the Monkey God), who coauthors the Aloysius Pendergast series with Lincoln Child, shares the inspirations for many of those procedurals in this gripping compendium of his journalistic work, much of which was previously published in the New Yorker. Selections include the masterful “Monster of Florence,” in which Preston and an Italian crime journalist attempt to identify a serial killer who claimed 14 victims in the 1970s and ’80s, and Preston himself gets accused of complicity in the murders. “The Skiers at Dead Mountain” is another highlight, and has a more satisfying ending: Preston provides a persuasive explanation for the “apparently inexplicable” mass deaths of skiers in Russia’s Ural Mountains in 1959, which some attributed to a murderous yeti. There are also intriguing natural puzzles, such as “The Mystery of Hell Creek,” about a graveyard in North Dakota containing animals killed by the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Their remains were discovered by a paleontologist who read one of Preston’s novels that featured a similar find. Throughout, Preston tackles his subjects with the obsessive enthusiasm of an amateur detective and the skills of a seasoned novelist; even those who read the articles when they first were published will take pleasure in new afterwords that provide updates about Preston’s theories. This is unbeatable reading for armchair sleuths. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME. (Dec.)

[S]o skillfully sketched is the lure of the unknown in Preston’s collection of essays. From the safe distance of the pages of The Lost Tomb, we are allowed a delicious taste of what it is to be consumed with the desire to know, even when all evidence points to the fact that, maybe, we are better off leaving a mystery alone.”—Bookpage, starred review

AMAZON HISTORY BOOK OF THE MONTH DECEMBER 2023—Amazon

“[A] gripping compendium of his journalistic work […] Throughout, Preston tackles his subjects with the obsessive enthusiasm of an amateur detective and the skills of a seasoned novelist; even those who read the articles when they first were published will take pleasure in new afterwords that provide updates about Preston’s theories. This is unbeatable reading for armchair sleuths.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston’s expertly woven tales."—Kirkus

"Sometimes nonfiction is even more intriguing than fiction, and Preston certainly knows how to keep readers’ attention while taking them on a journey into the mysteries of the past."—New York Journal of Books

"“The pieces are so good and the reporting so thorough that The Lost Tomb is a worthy addition to library collections.”—Booklist

"[I]mmersive and unputdownable"—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

"[T]he true crime book you've been waiting for."—The Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Lost Tomb is a seminal work about things that really do go bump in the night that proceeds to show us exactly how that can be. An extraordinary achievement in all respects.”—BookTrib

“If Indiana Jones had kept a diary, it might have read much like Preston’s new nonfiction work. After discovering a forgotten city in the Amazonian forest, an undertaking he documents in The Lost City of the Monkey God, the author travels across the globe, seeking to solve some of the ancient world’s most beguiling mysteries.”
 —Alta

“THE LOST TOMB could not have come along at a better time […] this is a book worth savoring.”—Book Reporter

"[A] must-read for adventure, true crime, and New Mexico enthusiasts."—New Mexico Magazine

"A welcome addition to Preston’s truly gripping and impressive body of work."—BookTrib

Praise for The Lost City of the Monkey God

"Memoirs of jungle adventures too often devolve into lurid catalogs of hardships [but] Preston proves too thoughtful an observer and too skilled a storyteller to settle for churning out danger porn. He has instead created something nuanced and sublime: a warm and geeky paean to the revelatory power of archaeology...Few other writers possess such heartfelt appreciation for the ways in which artifacts can yield the stories of who we are."—The New York Times Book Review

"A well-documented and engaging read...The author's narrative is rife with jungle derring-do and the myriad dangers of the chase."—USA Today

"Deadly snakes, flesh-eating parasites, and some of the most forbidding jungle terrain on earth were not enough to deter Douglas Preston from a great story."—The Boston Globe

"Breezy, colloquial and sometimes very funny...A very entertaining book."—The Wall Street Journal

"This modern-day archeological adventure and medical mystery reads as rapidly as a well-paced novel, but is a heart-pounding true story."—Shelf Awareness (Starred Review)

Deadly snakes, flesh-eating parasites, and some of the most forbidding jungle terrain on earth were not enough to deter Douglas Preston from a great story.

This modern-day archeological adventure and medical mystery reads as rapidly as a well-paced novel, but is a heart-pounding true story.

A well-documented and engaging read...The author's narrative is rife with jungle derring-do and the myriad dangers of the chase.

“Preston has an unerring sense of suspense, of how to hold the reader in his grip.”

Breezy, colloquial and sometimes very funny...A very entertaining book.

Will Collyer's narration will hook listeners as author Douglas Preston reveals an assortment of true stories behind his fictional works. Listeners will have to wait for the final chapter to hear about the tomb where several of Ramses II's sons were laid to rest, protected by curses that are both amusing and chilling in Collyer's narration. Collyer also brings drama to his narration of Preston's web search for an old friend; he recounts Preston's memories with fondness before revealing a sad discovery. To bring an interrogation to life, Collyer makes the questions of the police loud and rough, building the tension. Collyer also harshly voices online comments about murder suspect Amanda Knox, who Preston believes is innocent. Preston first told these true stories in magazines such as THE NEW YORKER. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

2023-09-15
More adventure journalism from the noted thriller author.

As Preston, author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, writes in an engaging introduction, “I could never have become a novelist without first being a nonfiction journalist”—or a childhood reader of adventure tales, including one about the presumed pirate booty buried on Nova Scotia’s Oak Island. The author remembered that particular yarn as a grownup, traveled there, and wrote a story for Smithsonian that was “the most popular [article] the magazine had ever published.” His story, like many included here, turns up more questions than answers, but it’s worth noting that it also spawned a long-running reality-TV series that, if nothing else, speaks to our fascination with all things buried. One piece centers on the so-called Monster of Florence, whose brutal crimes Preston tracks long after the fact, confident that he could reveal the true story behind them, only to conclude, “Any crime novel, to be successful, must contain certain basic elements: there must be a motive; evidence; a trail of clues; and a process of discovery that leads, one way or another, to a conclusion,” adding, “life…is not so tidy.” Among the assorted untidy puzzles is the twisted tale of Kennewick Man, a skeleton that turned up in an eroding Washington riverbank and that touched off a huge controversy when its DNA suggested ancient European origins. It’s one of several archaeology-based pieces that deal with similar controversies: whether the possibility that cannibalism may have taken place in the ancient Southwest (with the ghoulish problem one archaeologist faced: “he needed a way to identify human tissue that had passed through the digestive system of another human being”), or why hundreds of skeletons were found at a lake high in the Himalayas.

Buffs of buried-treasure and long-ago true-crime tales will enjoy Preston’s expertly woven tales.