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The devil is in the details
''Brimstone''
Reviewed by John Orr
When Agnes Torres, rosary in hand, finds her obnoxious and profane employer's body, she
has no doubt about what has happened. ''The devil had finally come for Jeremy Grove.''
''Mr. Jeremy wasn't sleeping ... A sleeping man wouldn't be lying with his elbows
raised above the bed, fists clenched so hard that blood had leaked between the fingers. A
sleeping man wouldn't have his torso scorched and caved in upon itself.''
Praying in Spanish Torres finds, burned into the floor, a cloven footprint. Later, bits of
sulfur -- brimstone -- are found, scattered around.
When the police investigate, they find that Grove had spent his last hours recanting of his
nastiest art reviews, trying to make amends with artists he had trashed, and calling a bishop
to beg for help in casting out the devil.
And, Grove's body had burned from the inside out, leaving the bed on which it lay
untouched by flame. Hours after death, his internal organs still read at hotter than 120
degrees.
It was that detail that led me to immediately and correctly guess the means of Grove's
death in ''Brimstone,'' a thrilling new mystery from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. But the who eluded me for a long time, despite
liberal clues that seem obvious in hindsight. And the why required a much more brilliant
deductive mind than my own.
Happily, Preston and Child have such a sharp fellow in their stable of characters, in FBI
Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, star of several Preston-Child books, including ''Cabinet of
Curiosities'' and ''Still Life with Crows.''
Pendergast is a wonderful creation. A wealthy and genteel Southerner, he
is possessed of education, wit, charm, perspicacity, intelligence and street smarts. His
custom clothes are at once elegant and full of tricks, such as hidden lock picks and bits of
costumes and make-up.
I loved a scene in which Pendergast tells the upper-crust opera lover, Count Fosco,
''Opera has always struck me as vulgar and infantile. I prefer the symphonic form: pure music,
without such props as sets, costumes, melodrama, sex and violence.''
Fosco responds by booming out, ''Braveggia, urla! T'affretta a palesarmi
il fondo dell'alma ria!''
And Pendergast ripostes by immediately translating the Puccini: ''Shout,
braggart! What a rush you're in to show me the last dregs of your vile soul!''
Pendergast is joined on this adventure by Sgt. Vincent D'Agosta of the
Southampton Police Department -- who was Lt. D'Agosta of the New York Police Department when
he and Pendergast first met, in ''Relic.''
D'Agosta is plenty smart, if not as well educated or elegant as
Pendergast, and the two make a great team. The story of D'Agosta's descent from big city lieutenant
to smaller-town sergeant is, I think, a subtle joke from Preston and Child. Because D'Agosta
had quit the NYPD to write mystery novels. That effort crashed and burned, taking his marriage
with it; he is being punished by his creators for muscling in on their territory. They also
have a lot of fun trashing critics, using the dead Grove as their stalking dummy.
Turns out Grove had many enemies and no friends, which makes for a wide
pool of suspects, but Pendergast and D'Agosta are soon helped by other eerie killings, which
increase the number of available clues, in Manhattan and in Florence, Italy. Which makes for a
fun read for mystery fans.
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