{"id":916,"date":"2026-01-02T16:23:24","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T21:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/?p=916"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T21:25:07","slug":"pendergast-the-beginning-douglas-preston-lincoln-child-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/916\/pendergast-the-beginning-douglas-preston-lincoln-child-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Pendergast: The Beginning by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child (Review)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pendergast:<\/a>Pendergast: The Beginning<\/a>\u00a0(Agent Pendergast Series)<\/strong>
\nby Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child<\/p>\n

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
\nPub Date: January 27, 2026
\nGeneral Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers<\/p>\n

DESCRIPTION\/SYNOPSIS:<\/strong><\/p>\n

From the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Preston and Child comes the Agent Pendergast origin story\u2014a golden opportunity for longtime fans and new readers to learn about Agent Pendergast\u2019s strange and shocking first case.<\/em><\/p>\n

It only took six months for the life of Special Agent Dwight Chambers to crumble around him. First, he lost his partner, and then, tragically, his wife. Returning to work at the New Orleans Field Office, Chambers is dismayed to find himself saddled with mentoring a brand new FBI agent\u2014a certain A. X. L. Pendergast. As Chambers tries to pull himself together, his enigmatic and exasperating junior partner pulls an outrageous stunt that gets both of them suspended.<\/p>\n

Pendergast welcomes the banishment, because it gives him the opportunity to investigate a peculiar murder in Mississippi that has captured his fancy. Chambers grudgingly goes along. What starts off as a whimsical quest swiftly turns into a terrifying pursuit, as Chambers and Pendergast uncover a string of grisly, ritualistic killings that defy any known serial killer profile.<\/p>\n

Thanks in large part to Pendergast\u2019s brilliance and unorthodox methods, they solve the case and find the killer\u2026 and that is when the true horror begins.<\/p>\n

REVIEW:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pendergast: The Beginning<\/strong><\/a> is billed as the origin story of Agent Pendergast. As a long-time fan of the Agent Pendergast series, I was thrilled at the opportunity to get an advanced reader copy for review.<\/p>\n

The story begins with A. X. L. Pendergast already working as a junior agent for the FBI. There are hints about his time in the “Ghost Company” performing top secret black ops but only a shading of information, though this does reveal the connection to Pendergast’s ‘sponsor’ in the FBI and how he met met Proctor who, as those already familiar with the series know, becomes Pendergast’s competent factotum.<\/p>\n

A lot of the early going in the story deals with Proctor’s abduction and imprisonment by an apparent technically detailed, surgically trained serial killer, which ties into the cold case that Pendergast and his FBI mentor, Agent Chambers end up investigating after they are kicked out of the New Orleans field office due to Pendergast’s unsanctioned but successful corruption sting. Initially, Pendergast’s mentor is more than willing to let Pendergast take the lead in interviews, etc., then pointing out course corrections for the young agent. But eventually Pendergast’s out-of-the-box investigative skills and penchant for skirting rules and regulations drivers Chambers to distraction, to the point where he wants to wash his hands of the young agent.<\/p>\n

It’s apparent early on that Pendergast, despite his verbal deference to the older, more experienced agent, will not be constrained and will, ultimately take on cases that hold special interest to him. His personal wealth, derived from his notorious family, allows him to treat his FBI role as a moral hobby rather than a needed vocation. The FBI badge can open investigative doors that would otherwise remained closed to him.<\/p>\n

Soon, the case investigating the serial killer who abducted Proctor takes a surprising twist which suggests a much deeper evil to Pendergast, who senses something nefarious hidden behind the obvious ‘facts,’ but he is unable to convince his partner that they need to keep digging to get to the truth. Nevertheless, Pendergast is relentless in his own investigation. From this point, the novel shifts into an exciting one man campaign against superior forces, basically Die Hard<\/em> on a steamboat. And Pendergast’s time in Ghost Company has prepared him for high risks and high stakes with low odds of success.<\/p>\n

In summary, Pendergast: The Beginning<\/em> is an exciting prequel to the main series, complete with a paranormal conspiracy, and reveals new layers of Pendergast\u2014though not all of them. (Maybe some day we’ll get the Ghost Company stories!) And yet it seems as if FBI Agent Pendergast has always been the highly competent Agent Pendergast we’ve witnessed in almost two dozen thrillers so far, even dating back to his time as a junior\/mentored agent. Would we expect anything less?<\/p>\n

Note: I received an eGalley of Pendergast: The Beginning<\/strong><\/a> from the publisher via NetGalley in consideration of an unbiased review.<\/p>\n

This site is a member of the Amazon affiliate partnership program. As such, any sales resulting from links to Amazon products on these pages might generate a small commission for the site, which helps keep the proverbial lights on—but does <\/em>not affect the price you pay at Amazon.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pendergast: The Beginning\u00a0(Agent Pendergast Series) by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child Publisher: Grand Central Publishing Pub Date: January 27, 2026 General Fiction | Mystery & Thrillers DESCRIPTION\/SYNOPSIS: From the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Preston and Child comes the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[237,233,332,234,290,135,331,330,203,49],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-agent-pendergast","tag-douglas-preston","tag-fbi","tag-lincoln-child","tag-murder","tag-mystery","tag-paranormal","tag-pendergast","tag-serial-killer","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":922,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.passarella.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}