Attic - danger from below
Attic - Danger from the Deep (English original title: Reliquary ) is a thriller novel by the American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child . The original edition was published in 1997 by New York publisher Forge Books. In 1999 the German translation was published by Droemer Knaur . The third joint novel by the two authors is based on their first work Relic - Museum der Angst .
action
The police diver Snow discovers two skeletonized, headless corpses in the Humboldt Kill , a New York sewer . One of them is identified as the It-Girl Pamela Wisher, the other is badly deformed and has strange bite marks. The retired researcher Dr. Frock and his former PhD student Margo Green from the Museum of Natural History examine the bodies with Dr. Simon Brambell and are reminded of the monster Mbwun , who murdered in the museum a year and a half ago. Meanwhile, the tabloid journalist Bill Smithback meets Mephisto, the leader of a group of tunnel people, underground .
Sergeant Laura Hayward reports to Lieutenant d'Agosta about several murders that took place in the New York underground tunnels and links them to the two bodies from the Humboldt kill. Together with Captain Waxie, they descend into the tunnel system. Police chief Horlocker comes under additional pressure because Anette Wisher, the mother of the murdered girl, is demonstrating against increasing crime with the campaign "Clean up New York".
After another murder has occurred in Belvedere Castle in Central Park , FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast turns up surprisingly . A short time later, Margo and Dr. Frock has two shocking news: Brambell is murdered and the deformed body is identified as Greg Kawakita, a former museum employee. Pendergast and d'Agosta visit Mephisto, who tells them about the dangerous wrinklers in Devil's Attic , the lowest level. After the two police officers return, Margo discovers the plant Lilicea mbwunensis , which the museum monster fed on, and some puzzling notes in Kawakita's destroyed laboratory . She finds out that Kawakita made a drug that was physically and mentally harmful to people, causing him to feel guilty.
Pendergast goes down to Devil's Attic and discovers a skull hut in the crystal pavilion of the Astor Tunnels, reminiscent of a description by Mbwun researcher Whittlesey. On another level of the underground, a gruesome massacre takes place in the subway. Dr. The chief of police likes Frock's idea of flooding the tunnels to destroy the murderous creatures underground.
When Pendergast came back to the surface, Margo had already found out through animal experiments that the drug caused a high sensitivity to light in the consumer, but also had a life-prolonging effect. Then Margo, Pendergast and d'Agosta panic when they realize that the plant is growing in the very reservoir in Central Park that is to be used to flood the tunnels. If the plant comes into contact with salty sea water, a global catastrophe threatens. The situation is made even more difficult when the homeless people who were driven from the underground by the police start a street battle with the "Clean up New York" demonstrators in Central Park.
Now several groups go underground at the same time. Navy Seals divers are working with snow to prepare blasting operations to prevent the plant from spreading. However, they are attacked and killed by the Wrinklers. The same fate overtakes Waxie and the public utility employee Duffy. Smithback, who followed the two, managed to save himself and met the group with Pendergast, d'Agosta, Mephisto and Margo, who brought more explosive charges underground. Margo also wants to destroy the wrinklers with vitamin D 3 , which has a similar effect to sunlight. In the crystal pavilion, the group is captured by the wrinklers. They are shocked to find that Frock is the leader of the Wrinklers. Because of the drug, he is no longer dependent on his wheelchair, which is now venerated as a relic. At the last moment, the group around Pendergast can flee.
background
According to the authors, the depiction of the New York underground essentially corresponds to reality. In the “Authors Note” on the last page of the novel, they write: “Even the Astor Tunnels, with their elegant crumbling stations, exist on a smaller scale and under a different name.” In their depictions of the underworld, Preston and Child refer primarily to the book Mole People (German title: Tunnel-Menschen ) by Jennifer Toth. That tunnel people live there has been confirmed outside of literary fiction, only there is no reliable data about their number.
The novel continues the story from Relic - Museum of Fear around the museum monster Mbwun. Pendergast and d'Agosta investigated the case in which Margo and Dr. Frock were involved as the museum's evolutionary biologist. Smithback was right in the middle of the action as a sensational reporter. Kawakita's experiments with the drug were already hinted at in the epilogue of the first novel. This gives the readers an informational edge over the protagonists at the beginning of the Attic story, which Lincoln Child names as a problem when writing the sequel.
literature
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Reliquary , Forge Books New York 1997 (English edition)
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Attic - Danger from the Deep , Droemer Knaur Munich 1999, ISBN 3426618230 (German edition)