Thunderhead

Thunderhead is an Indiana Jones style of thriller novel by American writers Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The book showcases what Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child do so well. This is combining technology, mystery and the unexplained. The book is not part of their main story-line involving FBI Special Agent Pendergast. However, two of the characters in this book can be found in the Pendergast series of books.

It's a suspenseful story of discovery, greed, and beauty that sees anthropologist Nora Kelly finding a letter that was written sixteen years ago, but mysteriously sent to her only recently. The letter is written by her father, long believed dead. The letter states that he had found the lost city of gold, Quivira. Kelly organises an expedition into a harsh, remote corner of Utah's canyon country. The details of the expedition are exceptionally well drawn and the characters all contributing to the realistic atmosphere of life on the trail. A portion of the team learns that the city of Quivira held not gold, but micaceous, golden coloured pottery, and that it also was a centre for an Aztec death cult, which had enslaved the native Anasazi people. The Aztec rulers used black magic, aided by a powder of the fungus Coccidioides immitis which could kill by causing Coccidioidomycosis. Kelly's teammate, Sloane, attempts to kill Kelly to be the sole person who can claim the find, not suspecting what Kelly has learned about the fungal infection, and neither parties revealing until very late that they are being tracked by contemporary practitioners of the cult, who have enhanced their ability to stalk and fight with traditional hallucinogens such as psilocybin, mescaline, and datura.

Judging by the blend of detailed archaeology and the hint of the supernatural it's clear that have put in a lot of cultural and religious research. The attention paid to description of places ground the story in reality. And the discussions amongst the expedition team, explore the nature of archaeology as a destructive endeavour.

Interesting settings and landscapes with a wide ranging cast of characters who compliment or oppose each other to create dynamics to the story. Recommended if you enjoy thrilling and suspenseful adventures, with touches of horror thrown in for good measure. I look forward to working my way through the rest of their books.