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To someone my age today, sixteen years does not seem all that long ago. Yes, I’ve gone through some major life changes in that time, but is the world itself so different than it was in 2006?

Yet for a soon-to-be-graduating high school senior, sixteen years is a lifetime.

This came to mind as I began reading the next book in the Douglas Preston/ Lincoln Child collaborative series. I was struck with how some things really have changed. The story opens up with a terrorism scare. The New York Museum of Natural History receives a package that is initially suspected to contain anthrax. The technician charged with determining the nature of the unknown substance reflects on how many false alarms she has to deal with and how people have become so quick to assume a terrorist attack.

Oh were times still so simple.

It’s actually true. Five years after the attacks on 9/11, I did feel a bit on edge wondering if the other shoe was going to drop. I do, in fact, recall that 2006 felt like a good time to avoid crowds, particularly on dates like July 4th or September 11th. In 2006, I was living in Manhattan, in the same place where I resided on that day in 2001. In retrospect, I was (along with a whole lot of other people) overreacting.

As to the book itself, I bought The Book of the Dead some years ago when I was eagerly consuming the works of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. This was years beyond the 2006 publication date, mind you, but still some time back. You might recall that I wrote a post where I mentioned the first in this series, Relic, of which this is now the 7th entry. At the time I referred to the writing as “a more intelligent version of a Crichton novel.” While this may be true, these books remain something of a guilty pleasure. The thriller genre seems to me to be the literary equivalent of junk food; weaponized to encourage frequent and rapid consumption. It was around four years ago that I decided to take a short break from Preston and Child. Somehow it became a long break.

This was a problem given that The Book of the Dead is the third in a tight series consisting of Brimstone (2004), Dance of Death (2005), and this current work. I do, sort of, remember reading Brimstone. I have a note saying I finished Dance of Death although I really don’t remember much of it at all. I think I did. The Book of the Dead is meant to take place mere weeks after the completion of Dance of Death and so the multi-year gap in my reading was a bit of a detriment.

To make matters a little bit worse, a major character in The Book of the Dead (Eli Glinn) is written about rather familiarly, although it meant nothing to me. It turns out that he comes from the book The Ice Limit (2000), a follow-on to Thunderhead. I did read Thunderhead, which develops other characters (namely Nora Kelly) important to the Book of the Dead plot.

Alas, I figured all of this out a little too late. The end notes for the book are the authors’ answer to a frequently asked question about what order in which to read the books. They emphasize that each book is written to be a satisfying stand-alone experience but, especially in this case, the development of the plot (as I outline above) would be better understood by the reader who read these books in the right order.

Bummer.

I think I will read The Ice Limit right now as it is available from the library. Better late than, well, even later.

– Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com