Still Life with Crows: A Novel

Once again all the cops are red neck idiots and they need Aleysius Xingu Leng Pendergast to set them straight. When push comes to shove the cops become sniveling little cry babies. (I sure hope Preston or Child get that parking ticket straightened out.)

If you are a die hard Pendergast or P/C fan, then you will not like this review so do yourself a favor, mark not helpful and move on.

This starts out slow like most P/C novels. At chapter 17 it gets real good and stays that way to chapter 38. Then like most P/C novels there is a four hour chase scene, to come to a conclusion that everyone, but an idiot from a small town in Kansas has figured out. That's if you go with the cliche way in which Kansas small town people are treated in this book. All the characters are miserable, not a happy person in the town.

From the way the small Kansas town is described, I do not believe Preston and Child have ever been in Kansas. The timeline is somewhere after 2002, yet everybody is driving AMC gremlins and Hornets. AMC went out of business in 1987. If you go to Kansas, as I do once a week, you will find they drive mostly Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, especially in farming communities as this is suppose to be. The town is surrounded by cornfields and they want this company to come in and plant evil genetically modified corn to provide more jobs. The main employer is a Turkey processing plant. Hello P&C, Turkey Processing Plants are built next to Turkey Farms, not cornfields. If you have a Turkey Processing Plant then you will also have a large Mexican American Community or Illegal Aliens. You might have a diner in town, which serves meat and potatoes as describe, but you will also have at least one Mexican Restaurant. It's sign will be hand painted in Green and Red. A girl who lives in a trailer park will not have a neighbor with built in lawn sprinklers. The church will not be Lutheran it will be Catholic.

Pendergast does his going back in time thing again. It is explained as a thing called Chongg Ran, which is taught in Tibet. Essentially if you do lots of research and study this Chongg Ran, you will be able to go into a trance and go back to any time and you will see what should have happened. According to Preston and Child, Chongg Ran has never been published it is a secret teaching and is only taught orally to other monks and Preston and Child. In other words they made it up. May be in the next book Pendergast will do some Remote Viewing.

I did give this three stars and it does have some great parts, it is just to bad it is surrounded by Cliches, Long Chase scenes and boring miniscule descriptions about law enforcement. No one cares about the politics they keep putting into these books.

About the narrator. I have made plain before how I feel about Scott Brick. It is hard to explain his style. You know how you have listened to some narrators who are monotone and every line is read the same boring way. Brick is exactly the opposite. Every sentence is read as it is the most exciting thing in the world. In one part he reads about Pendergast picking up a phone and putting it back in the cradle. It is read like The Eagle Has Landed!!!!. Sixteen hours of everything is stupendously exciting is draining. Having said that SB was probably the best person to read this, as he really captures the whole everyone is a miserable character aspect.

Yes. I am reading the whole series. As with series, some of the novels are very good, some passable and other fall very short. I felt that this one fell very short. The suspense of the plot was inordinately stretched at the front of the book and the inevitable chase scene was too long. During the last third of the novel, I had already guessed what the connections were and the final wound up was done in the epilog.

So far I like the series starting with Relic. But the first two book were much better than this one. Crows did leave a few questions open and I am hoping the this is not the decline of the series.

this novel was the best suspense audio book that I have listened to this year. If I could give it 6 stars, I would. The plot was well written, twisting and turning, keeping you on the edge of your seat...never boring...the characters were well developed and the descriptive powers of Preston and Childs brought everything to life for me....i.e. after the turkey packing plant description, I'm not sure if I'll ever eat turkey again! I had a clear picture in my mind of the whole setting and happenings. The narrator, Scott Brick was also excellent. I never got tired of his voice and he performed all the characters without flaw. If you are looking for a unique detective story that keeps you listening until the wee hours of the night, then this is the book for you. This is how all audio books should be!
enjoy!

I have read and/or listened to every Preston/Child book. And Crows is one of my favorites, only out ranked by Cabinet of Curiosities. I was happy to see that they finally had an unabridged version available, and with Scott Brick you can't go wrong. Pendergast is the one of best characters in modern thrillers, here he shines. Great Read and Listen!!!!

I dislike abridged books. Resulting from that I have been reduced to reading the Pendergast series out of order, shameful really. The release of this book leaves only two Pendergast novels remaining still abridged, "The Cabinet of Curiosities" and "Brimstone". Do try to rectify this situation soon Audible. I can't decided if I prefer Brick or Auberjonois , really either is more than satisfactory. Like any Pengergast novel you will not be disappointed by this volume, and the price what more could one want.

Preston and Childs can write, and Scott Brick can narrate, but this is not the best work of any of them. The book starts out on a pretty topical theme: the development of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in a very rural cornfield in Medicine Creek ("Crick"), Kansas. FBI agent Pendergast is an interesting if somewhat contrived protagonist. This is the first book I have read in this series, and I am not sure I'll read another. The book quickly devolves into a series of ghastly murders by a large being which truly recalls The Thing, and whose vocabulary consists entirely of the utterance, "Muh." The murders become more and more ornate. There is competition between Medicine Crick and the neighboring town, Dieper, of which it might be said, be careful what you wish for. Both are dying towns, hoping that the experimental cornfield will happily stimulate their withering economies. Then the authors throw in a mysterious, reclusive scientist in a tumble-down mansion in New York City, a completely unnecessary and unrelated plot device. There are a few chuckles along the way, but one wishes for "Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein." (Lord, that does date me, doesn't it?) The book actually ends up being a kind of still life itself. If you are interested in the best of these guys, The Ice Limit is it, by a large distance. The authors actually mention that book twice in the text of this one, as if acknowledging the vast superiority of their finest work. Read that one.

This is a great listen. Classic Pendergast. It reminds me of some of the previous books with him at the NY museum. Great excitement and great adventure. DeGost is not in this one which is a bummer but Pendergast is great. Narration is amazing as always.

Scott Brick IS FBI Agent Penderghast. As I listen to all my audible books in the car, I found my self making extra trips, driving around the block or sitting in the parking lot just to listen to what was going to happen next. Can't wait to find the next one!

The suspense is gripping -- with the tonal inflections and acents of the different characters -- brilliant.

Be afraid of the dark -- very afraid.

Yes, it was a good story with one of my favorite characters Agent Pendergast

Agent Pendergast

The Sheriff

...in rural Kansas? The ultimate 'outsider' FBI agent attempts to insert himself into a bizarre murder investigation which quickly develops into a serial killer scenario, but unlike any serial killer Pendergast has ever seen. And to make matters worse, the locals don't like him one bit.

This story kept me guessing until the end and Scott Brick's narration is perfect (as usual). If you're already a fan of the series, this book is definitely credit-worthy. And if this is your first Pendergast novel, it probably won't be your last.