Review: OLD BONES, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

• 
  this edition published by Grand Central Publishing 2019
  
• ISBN 978-1-5387-4722-3
• 349 pages
• source: my local library

Synopsis

Nora Kelly, a young curator at the Santa Fe Institute of Archaeology, is approached by historian Clive Benton with a once-in-a-lifetime proposal: to lead a team in search of the so-called “Lost Camp” of the tragic Donner Party. This was a group of pioneers who earned a terrible place in American history when they became snow-bound in the California mountains in 1847, their fate unknown until the first skeletonized survivors stumbled out of the wilderness, raving about starvation, murder--and cannibalism.

Benton tells Kelly he has stumbled upon an amazing find: the long-sought diary of one of the victims, which has an enigmatic description of the Lost Camp. Nora agrees to lead an expedition to locate and excavate it--to reveal its long-buried secrets.

Once in the mountains, however, they learn that discovering the camp is only the first step in a mounting journey of fear. For as they uncover old bones, they expose the real truth of what happened, one that is far more shocking and bizarre than mere cannibalism. And when those ancient horrors lead to present-day violence on a grand scale, rookie FBI agent Corrie Swanson is assigned the case…only to find that her first investigation might very well be her last.

My Take

I came away thinking that this might be the beginnings of a new investigative team of  a forensic archaeologist and an FBI Special Agent,

Based on a true story from 1846, this made engaging reading as an archaeological team looks for a "lost camp" of some pioneers crossing the Sierra Nevada. They became lost, and the story ended tragically with starvation and cannibalism. There were tales also of a huge cache of gold dollars buried somewhere near the site.

Recommended reading.

It is probably decades since I have read a book by either of these authors.

My rating: 4.6

About the authors

Douglas Preston was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956, and grew up in the deadly boring suburb of Wellesley. Following a distinguished career at a private nursery school--he was almost immediately expelled—he attended public schools and the Cambridge School of Weston.

Lincoln seemed to have acquired an interest in writing as early as second grade, when he wrote a short story entitled Bumble the Elephant (now believed by scholars to be lost). Along with two dozen short stories composed during his youth, he wrote a shamelessly Tolkeinesque fantasy in twelfth grade titled The Darkness to the North (left unfinished at 400 manuscript pages).