Relic - Museum of Fear
Relic - Museum of Fear , The Relic - Museum of Fear (English original title: Relic ), is a thriller novel by the American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child . The original edition was published in 1994 by St. Martin's Press, New York. In 1997 the German translation by Thomas A. Merck was published by Droemer Knaur . It is the first joint work by the two authors. In the same year the novel was filmed under the title The Relic . The story continues in the novel Attic .
action
The story begins with discoveries in 1986 in the Amazon basin . A few years later, two boys die cruelly while wandering the basement of the New York Museum of Natural History . A short time later, a guard dies in the same way: the skulls of all victims were knocked in and part of the brain was removed. Aloysius Pendergast, Special Agent of the FBI , is investigating the case with Lieutenant Vincent d'Agosta because he has already dealt with similar victims in New Orleans . The museum management is trying to cover up the incidents, as a large exhibition on the subject of superstition is due to open in a few days . However, it cannot prevent more and more people from becoming interested in the case of the gruesome killings. The journalist Smithback researches without official permission and the biology doctoral student Margo Green is drawn into the case when she notices a strange creature near a figure named Mbwun in the exhibition that is still closed .
The Mbwun figure comes from a box that the anthropologist Whittlesey, who was researching the mysterious Kothoga people, sent to New York from an expedition to the Amazon a few years ago . The box is now stored in the so-called security zone. Margo's doctoral supervisor Frock sees his controversial theory of the callisto effect confirmed, according to which mutations occur time and again in evolution and a species destroys all specimens of a particularly dominant species. This time the humans are supposed to fall victim to the unknown creature. It turns out that the monster lives in the abandoned basement of the museum. It obviously eats the hypothalamus of its victims. However, these findings do not help the police at first and the exhibition is threatened with cancellation due to the acute danger to life.
When Margo reads Whittlesey's diary, which was kept under lock and key by PR director Lavinia Rickman, she noticed some inconsistencies. She realizes that the Kothoga did not use Mbwun to refer to the figure or the monster, but to plant fibers that Whittlesey used as packing material. Using Gregory Kawakita's extrapolator , a device that compares DNA , she examines the fibers and finds human hormones. In conversation with Dr. Frock, she comes to the conclusion that the monster first fed on the fibers and now needs human brains to replace it. That same evening the party opens for the exhibition with five thousand guests, all of whom are potential victims for the monster. The museum management cannot be persuaded to cancel the event. When the guests discover the corpse of a police officer in the exhibition rooms, a mass panic ensues, which is intensified by a total power failure and the failure of the electronic security systems.
While Margo and Dr. Frock meets Pendergast in the basement, d'Agosta flees with Smithback and a group of survivors, including the mayor, through a submerged passage in the lower basement. FBI agent Coffey, who took over the case at short notice, tries to get into the cordoned off part of the museum from the outside in order to save the people, but has no overview of what is going on inside. The very powerful, fast and intelligent monster cannot even be stopped by a heavily armed special unit . With the help of some plant fibers, Margo lures the monster away from the group around d'Agosta, who can finally save themselves via a ladder. The doctoral student also gives Pendergast the crucial hint to kill the creature with one shot through the eye into the brain.
When those involved look back on what happened four weeks later, they know that the monster had already murdered in Brazil and on the way to New York. Now they believe that all traces and remains have been destroyed. However, a few months later, Kawakita finds out that Whittlesey himself was the monster after eating the reovirus- infected plants and genetically altering his body.
background
Douglas Preston knows exactly where it happened because he worked in this museum for eight years. In addition to local knowledge, he also provides the scientific facts that enable a realistic description of the work in the museum. When Preston took the former editor Lincoln Child, who had already edited his previous book Dinosaurs in the Attic , through the museum one night, the idea for their debut novel came up in the summer of 1988. While working on the novel, Preston and Child only communicated by computer and never met in person. There was no monster in the first version of the novel; instead, Kawakita grew drugs from the mysterious plants. But then the publisher wanted a monster like in Jaws and Kawakita's drugs were pushed into the epilogue . In the sequel Attic - Danger from the depths this drug with its catastrophic effects takes center stage.
literature
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Relic , St. Martin's Press New York 1994 (English edition)
- Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Relic - Museum of Fear , Droemer Knaur Munich 1997, ISBN 3-426-60358-6 (German edition)