Verses for the Dead (Agent Pendergast)

It's a pretty good mystery and I like Agent Coldmoon.
But there were two things in the book I didn't like.
The non-spoiler thing is the now standard scene of Pendergast crawling around the crime scene,
picking up invisible things with a tweezers and putting them in test tubes that magically appear out of whatever he is wearing.
We almost never have a later scene in which Pendergast announces that after examining the single hair he found, he knew the killer owned an Albanian Moose Hound or something and that answers some question in the investigation.
So whats the point of the scene? We already know Pendergast is smarter than anybody.
Now the spoilery bit.
The motives of the father serial killer are sort of explained.But I don't get why he needs to kill several people as killing one would have made his point.Then, after botching his first solo kill, the son serial killer starts killing people in a completely different way and for no explained reason.The father taught the son how to do a specific kind of murder but then the son does a completely different murder while using capitalized words like Atone and Action to make it look almost religious.In the end of the book, there is no explanation as to why the son is doing murders.We get a fairly detailed analysis of the father but the sons motivation is missing.

I've read every book that Lincoln & Child have done together, and this one was probably one of my favorites. Often in the Pendergast series, they have a tendency to get bogged down with Pendergast's wealth, his relationship to Constance, and Pendergast's own misanthropy. With ‘Verses for the Dead,' they returned to a more standard serial killer mystery and introduced two characters I hope they bring back: Dr. Fauchet and Armstrong Coldmoon.

With giving Pendergast a partner who was his opposite in nearly every way (Coldmoon is Lakota, from the Rez, poor, with simple tastes, and was more by-the-book), it only served to enhance Pendergast's character in ways that even his pairings with D'Agosta did not highlight. SA Coldmoon was an interesting character in and of himself. I could stand to see him brought back for more adventures in the future.

There were no major revelations about Pendergast's family. No major twists or turns. This book really did not add to the overall story of Pendergast's world. It's a good stand-alone, much like ‘Still Life with Crows' was. Because of this, it was a refreshing revelation, especially since the last few books had been a little heavy and plodding with that sort of history.

I could definitely stand to see them to a few more Pendergast books like this one. Get back to the simple art of chasing down serial killers, fellas. It makes for better books.