Suspenseful Conundrums

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In reading Fever Dream, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s latest Pendergast novel, I knew that the protagonist, Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, would not kill his wife’s murderer, despite his vow to do so, for, were he to have done such a heinous act, he would have become irredeemably unsympathetic to the reader. As an FBI agent, Pendergast, like Superman, represents “truth, justice, and the American way,” and vigilante justice, being no justice at all, has never been a part of “the American way.” That’s why, in the all-American novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain has Colonel Sherburn face down the mob that has come to lynch him for shooting a drunken assailant. However, my suspicion that the protagonist would not kill his wife’s killer didn’t eliminate suspense; on the contrary, I was eager to see how the authors would avoid the agent’s fulfillment of his promise, wondering whether his doing so would be believable and satisfying. I’d say that it was, on both counts. Moreover, the resolution of this particular conflict is a study in how to maintain a character’s integrity while satisfying the need for justice that a cold-blooded murder deserves.

The authors also have gotten themselves into a bit of a pickle with regard to Pendergast’s legal ward, Constance Greene. Under arrest for allegedly tossing her infant son overboard during her crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, because the child, like his father, is “evil,” she tells a psychologist that she was born in the 1870’s. How will her apparent infanticide and her absurd claim to be nearly 150 years old be resolved? Alas, in Fever Dream, neither issue is resolved. Both are left hanging, as it were, for resolution in the next (or some other future) installment in the series. The same conundrum applies to Constance as applies to Pendergast. A likeable, if eccentric, character to this point in the series, she would lose the reader’s sympathy if either the murder of her own child or the telling of an outrageous, seemingly pointless lie is left to stand. Therefore, the same challenge to the writers exists as did with regard to Pendergast’s vow to kill his wife’s killer. There must be a resolution to Constance’s apparent infanticide and to her gross lie that is both credible (that is, logical within the context of the story) and emotionally satisfying to the reader. One suspects that Preston and Child will accomplish both requirements--they usually do--but the fun, from the reader’s point of view--lies in seeing just how they pull off the feat.

Learning from the Masters: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

In Chapter 47 of their latest novel, Fever Dream, authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child shed light upon their technique for creating mysterious and engaging thrillers.

To NYPD’s Captain Laura Hayward, a stand-in, at this point in the story, for the reader, who may be as mystified as to the protagonist’s actions as Hayward herself, the investigation that her boyfriend, homicide detective Lieutenant Vincent (“Vinnie”) D’Agosta, and his friend, the FBI’s Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast, are conducting concerning the murder, twelve years ago, of Pendergast’s wife, Helen, seems to be “a typical Pendergast investigation, all hunches and blind alleys and conflicting evidence, strung together by highly questionable police work” (235).

However, from the author’s perspective (and from Hayward’s as well, once Pendergast explains his and D’Agosta’s findings to date), “the bizarre story” has “an internal logic,” for Preston and Child, of course, have plotted the story in full, in advance of their writing a single word of it. However, because they withhold relevant information from the reader, supplying key material in a piecemeal fashion, the authors deny both D’Agosta, Pendergast, and the reader the very context that the writers have had from the beginning. As a result, “the bizarre story” they tell, through Pendergast, has “an internal logic” to them, but not to the reader (or, initially, to the investigators or to Hayward, before she is clued in).

Of course, eventually, Preston and Child must allow their protagonist, with the help of D’Agosta, to figure out at least something of what is going on--in other words, to causally connect the pieces of evidence and the clues that the investigators discover--and, to gain Hayward’s confidence when he needs her to take over D’Agosta’s role as his assistant, following the lieutenant’s being gravely wounded, Pendergast shares his theory concerning the significance of the evidence:

. . . Pendergast explained his late wife’s obsession with Audubon; how they had traced her interest in the Carolina Parakeet, the Black Frame, the lost parrot, and the strange fate of the Doane family. He read her passages from the Doane girl’s diary: a chilling descent into madness. He described their encounter with Blast, another seeker of the Black Frame, himself recently murdered--as had been Helen Pendergast’s former employer at Doctors With Wings, Morris Blackletter. And finally, he explained the series of deductions and discoveries that led to the unearthing of the Black Frame itself (235).

In Fever Dream, the authors also suggest an analogy (not an especially original one, but one which is, nevertheless, illuminating) concerning their narrative technique. Due to his association with Pendergast, D’Agosta has learned, “long ago. . . to never get caught without two things: a gun and a flashlight” (138). As if the investigators were in a darkened room throughout their investigation, most of the contents of the room (the facts and clues of the investigation) are unseen (unknown, overlooked, or not understood). Therefore, facts, clues, and other pertinent information are brought to light (discovered or recognized as relevant) only a little at a time, as the flashlight’s beam (perception, comprehension, analysis, and evaluation) exposes them--and, when it does expose them, these pieces of evidence are usually not in any apparent logical or systematic order. As a result, both to the investigators and the reader at the moment that the evidence is gleaned), it may well seem that the investigators are, indeed, pursuing “hunches,” following “blind alleys,” and collecting “conflicting evidence” blindly and haphazardly. It is only after they have gathered the evidence, determined its significance, and interpreted its meaning that D’Agosta and Prendergast (mostly Pendergast) can develop a theory that fully illuminates their findings so that their work (or their “bizarre story”) begins to have “an internal logic.”

In his discussion with Hayward at his estate, following D’Agosta’s grave injury, Pendergast, in fact, models his method, deducing the meaning (and thereby providing the explanation for) “the central mystery of the case, the birds,” linking Audubon’s illness (the cause of his genius as a painter) to Helen’s discovery of the same link between Audubon’s genius and his sickness:

“And all she wanted with the painting was confirmation for this theory?” [Hayward asks Pendergast].

Pendergast nodded. “That painting is the link between Audubon’s early, indifferent work and his later brilliance. It’s proof of the transition he underwent. But that doesn’t quite get to the central mystery in this case: the birds.”

Hayward frowned. “The birds?”

“The Carolina Parakeets. The Doane parrot.”

Hayward herself had been puzzling over the connection to Audubon’s illness, to no avail. “And?”

Pendergast sipped his coffee. “I believe we’re dealing with a strain of avian flu.”

“Avian flu? You mean, bird flu?”

“That, I believe, is the disease that laid Audubon low, that nearly killed him, and that was responsible for his creative flowering. His symptoms--high fever, headache, delirium, cough--are all consistent with flu. A flu he no doubt caught dissecting a Carolina Parakeet” (236).

Nor is Pendergast through with demonstrating his powers of deduction, for he next links the birds to the Doane family’s artistic brilliance and the madness to which they later succumbed, citing significant “similarities” between the family’s behavior and Audubon’s own conduct:

“But all that still doesn’t explain how those parakeets [the Carolina Parakeet specimens Helen stole from the Audubon collection] are linked to the Doane family” [Hayward declares to Pendergast].

“It’s quite simple” [Pendergast explains]. The Doanes were sickened by the same disease that struck Audubon.”

“What makes you say that?”

“There are simply too many similarities, Captain, for anything else to make sense. The sudden flowering of creative brilliance. Followed by mental dissolution. Too many similarities--and Helen knew it. That’s why she went to get the bird from them [the Doanes]” (237).

He is also certain that Helen had known the same cause-and-effect relationship between the birds and the flowering genius (and madness) of both Audubon and the Doane family, which is why she visited the museum housing specimens of birds personally preserved by Audubon and why she visited the Doane family, stealing both museum specimens and the parrot that the Doane family had found and adopted as a pet. Helen had meant, Pendergast contends, to “extract from them [the birds] a live sample” of the avian virus, both to “keep it from spreading” and “to test it. . . to confirm her suspicions” that the virus was what had caused the artist’s and family members’ artistic genius and subsequent madness. Helen’s knowledge is attested to, Pendergast says, by the precautions she had taken to avoid infecting herself with the virus:

“. . . She wore leather gloves, and she stuffed the bird and its cage into a garbage bag. Why? Initially, I assumed the bag was simply for concealment. But it was to keep herself and her car from contamination” [Pendergast tells Hayward].

“And the leather gloves?’

“Worn no doubt to conceal a pair of medical gloves beneath. Helen was trying to remove a viral vector from the human population. No doubt the bird, cage, and bag were all incinerated--after she’d taken the necessary samples, of course” (237-38).

Preston and Child do not merely have characters discuss past investigative findings. The authors also use dialogue between their characters to present rhetorical questions pertaining to as-yet-undiscovered aspects and implications of the investigation, as in this exchange between Pendergast and Hayward, wherein the reader is advised, as it were, of three other, related questions implicit in the case:

“Isn’t there another question you’re forgetting?” Hayward asked.

Pendergast looked at her.

“You say Helen stole the parrots Audubon studied--the ones that supposedly sickened him. Helen also visited the Doane family and stole their parrot--because, as you also say, she knew it was infected. By inference, Helen is the common thread that binds the two events. So aren’t you curious what role she might have had in the sequencing and inoculation?” (238)

Masters of their craft, Preston and Child show how, in skilled hands, authors can provide data without context, piece together a theory that, using deductive and inductive reasoning to analyze causes and effects and to infer implications concerning the significance and meaning of such evidence, explains criminal undertakings and their perpetrators’ motives and goals while, at the same time, keeping unresolved questions that are important to the developing case before the reader’s mind. Whether an aspiring author writes horror fiction or thrillers, he or she can learn a good deal from the example of such masterful storytellers.

Fever Dream’s Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 4 through 6)

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

The fourth chapter of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s Fever Dream does not begin with a tagline that identifies the action’s location, for the action continues in the setting that was identified in the previous chapter’s tagline, that of “The Fever Trees.” The chapter’s opening paragraph opens in media res, or in the middle of things, with the protagonist’s regaining consciousness:

The world came back into focus. Pendergast was in one of the rondevaals. The distant throb of a chopper sounded through the thatch roof, rapidly increasing in volume (22).

The authors again prove their adroitness at marrying action to emotion and, indeed, action to a specific character’s own current dilemma or perceptions. The helicopter’s “throb” mirrors the throbbing that, readers might suspect, Pendergast himself feels after having just been mauled by a huge and vicious lion. In addition, the fact that the sound of the aircraft’s engine “rapidly” increases “in volume” suggests that it is arriving, not departing, and again makes readers share the protagonist’s perspective: Pendergast hears the approaching “chopper,” as do the novel’s readers. It is as if the aircraft is coming for them as much as for him.

The scene shifts in Chapter 5, as its tagline informs readers, from Africa to “St. Charles Parish, Louisiana.” The paragraph’s allusion to luxury automobiles, to a palatial “plantation house,” and to the estate’s being listed “on the National Register of Historic Places” indicates that whoever is traveling in such an automobile to such a destination probably him- or herself (himself, as it turns out, for the next paragraph makes the character’s identity--protagonist “A. X. L. Pendergast”--clear)a man or woman of means and status:

The Rolls-Royce Grey Ghost crept around the circular drive, the crisp crunch of gravel under the tires muffled in places by patches of crabgrass. The motorcar was followed by a late-model Mercedes, in silver. Both vehicles came to a stop before a Greek revival plantation house, framed by ancient black oaks draped in fingers of Spanish moss. A small bronze plaque screwed into the façade announced that the mansion was known as Penumbra; that it had been built in 1821 by the Pendergast family; and that it was on the National Register of Historic Places (24).

Chapter 6 transports the reader, its tagline declares, to “New York City,” introducing a recurring character, Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta, who is busy investigating a murder scene. For readers for whom Fever Dream is the first of the Pendergast series of novels, D’Agosta will appear to be a new character; those who have read other novels in the series will recognize him as a friend and sometimes-ally of Pendergast. The paragraph is matter-of-fact in style, depicting the crime scene with the dispassionate and objective manner of a motion picture camera. Employing, as the rest of the novel does, an omniscient narrator, the paragraph’s impartial reporting of the scene indicates D’Agosta’s own professionally detached observation of the scene. Here, readers will think, is a man who is used to investigating murders.

Four AM, Saturday, Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta pushed through the crowd, ducked under a crime-scene tape, and walked over to where the body lay sprawled across the sidewalk outside one of the countless identical Indian restaurants on East 6th Street. A large pool of blood had collected beneath it, reflecting the red and purple neon light in the restaurant’s grimy window with surreal splendor (32).

(Readers may--or may not--learn more about this seemingly casually referenced death; the authors sometimes include a future incident that bears upon or is in some way related to such a seemingly random event as this murder of an as-yet anonymous individual; other times, such an incident as the one described in this opening paragraph is a stand-alone occurrence, unrelated to future narrative events. By sometimes connecting such an incident to another, future event and sometimes not making such an association, Preston and Child keep their readers guessing.) In either case, the investigation of a murder scene is an interesting way to introduce a character and a good way to suggest his expertise as an investigator.

Once again, the authors show their substantial talent for making a single paragraph perform several functions--in the cases of the three cited in this post, identifying readers’ perspective with that of the novel’s protagonist and characterizing characters by associating them each with a particular type of setting.

"Fever Dream": Opening Paragraphs (Chapters 1 through 3)

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child’s latest novel, Fever Dream, like most of their books, changes scenes with regularity. This time, the action moves among locations in Africa, Louisiana, New York, Georgia, Maine, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, and Mississippi. Eve when the action does manage to settle down for a moment, in one state, the story tends to move among lesser locations, such as towns, swamps, and plantations.

Because the action shifts among a variety of scenes, the opening paragraphs of the book’s chapters are largely devoted to the task of setting the scenes. Douglas and Preston accomplish this goal with economy, making each chapter interesting in itself, despite its similar mission with most of its brethren, by employing a variety of rhetorical and poetic devices.

The chapters in which a new or recurring scene occurs begins with a tagline, announcing the location, which is followed by the opening chapter. The first chapter is labeled “Musalangu, Zambia,” which is followed with this description of the place:

The setting sun blazed through the African bush like a forest fire, hot yellow in the sweltering evening that gathered over the bush camp. The hills along the upper Makwele Stream rose in the east like blunt green teeth, framed against the sky (1).

The authors employ two similes, “sun. . . like a forest fire” and “hills. . . like teeth,” which add interest to what might have been an otherwise rather mundane description, and the second figure of speech suggests danger and, more specifically, a bestial danger, which the beginning of the story soon delivers in the death of Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast’s wife Helen, who is killed and devoured by a rogue lion.

Chapter 2 begins with the tagline, “Kingazu Camp, Luangwa River,” and involves the readers in the story’s action, as Pendergast and Helen drive to the camp mentioned in the chapter’s tagline. The writers’ description puts their readers inside the vehicle in which the characters make their way to their destination; the readers can all but feel every bump and jolt of the rough ride:

The Land Rover banged and lurched along the Banta Road, a bad track in a country legendary for them. Pendergast turned the wheel violently left and right to avoid the yawning potholes, some almost as deep as the bashed-up Rover. The windows were wide open--the air-conditioner was broken--and the interior of the car was awash in dust blown in by the occasional vehicle passing in the other direction (6).

Involving the readers in the action creates a sense of immediacy, a sense of you-are-here, which gives them a stake in the characters’ mission. Thanks to Preston and Child’s use of this technique, their readers are literally along for the ride. This opening chapter also employs a personification; the potholes in the road are “yawning,” which may recall the simile, in the previous chapter’s opening paragraph, in which “hills” were likened to “blunt green teeth.” The authors seem, again, to remind their readers, albeit rather subtly, that there is a dangerous predator not far ahead--a “yawning” mouth full of “blunt green teeth,” the “green” of which could symbolize the African veldt--or a denizen therein.,

The opening paragraph to chapter 3 (which is labeled “The Fever Trees”) sets up a stark contrast between nature, as represented by the African veldt, and civilization, as represented by Kingazu Camp. The jungle is quiet, seemingly “subdued,” and its stillness contrasts with the busyness of the camp’s residents as they go about their daily business. The relative quiet of the seemingly somnolent jungle, however, appears deceiving, somewhat like the calm that precedes a storm, because the authors include the phrase “false dawn,” suggesting that the daybreak which illuminates the dark continent is somehow deceitful or fraudulent. In short, it would be a mistake, perhaps, to let down one’s guard. Even when the jungle appears to be at rest, it is a dangerous place:

The night had been silent. Even the local prides that often tattooed the darkness with their roars were lying low, and the usual chatter of night animals seemed subdued. The sound of the river was a faint gurgle and shush that belied the massive flow, perfuming the air with the smell of water. Only with the false dawn came the first noises of what passed for civilization: hot water being poured into shower-drums in preparation for morning ablutions (13).

The suggestion of deceitfulness or fraud that the phrase “false dawn” creates is echoed, and reinforced, by other phrases. “The river was a faint. . . shush,” readers are told--and they are likely to think the noun “shush” strange in this context; normally, one does not think of a river as making a “shushing” sound such as librarians sometimes make to quiet noisy young patrons. Moreover, like the “subdued” jungle animals, the river seems to be in a conspiracy with the dawn to suppress some secret; the sounds that it makes--”a faint gurgle and shush”--themselves are deceitful, as it were, for they are “belied” by the river’s “massive flow.”

Finally, the opening paragraph to this chapter suggests that nature, as represented by the jungle, which is full of mighty forces--”lions, “night animals,” and a “river” of “massive flow”--is characterized as powerful, perhaps predatory, whereas civilization is portrayed as paltry and weak. One of the few improvement that the camp has been able to the offerings of nature is meager, indeed: The water from the river has been heated so that “hot water” may be “poured into shower-drums in preparation for morning ablutions.” Humans, who often fancy themselves to be the masters of nature, are here characterized as being something more like its parasites--or potential prey.