City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)

City of Endless Night by Douglas Preston
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

H and Pendergast are working together again but there is a definite chill between them and Pendergast for once is attempting to follow the rules until H tells him not too, that he needs the old Pendergast back but that he is still in the doghouse. Pendergast is also missing Constance who has gone to live with her son.

Vincent is the lead detective in a bizarre homicide of a young socialite (Grace Ozmian) who was beheaded some time after her murder. The only clue seems to be the fact that she was responsible for a young child's death in a hit and run and thanks to her Father's (Anton Ozmian) money only received a slap on the wrist. Soon after a series of beheadings occur of wealthy well guarded men who have lots of enemies, in fact so many it's hard to narrow down the suspect list. Pendergast is involved as it seems the young socialites body may have been taken across State Lines.

The Reporter Harriman comes up with the idea that the beheadings are being done by a vigilante who is tired of the 1% getting away with their crimes, and the Police buy into the theory hook line and sinker. Including Vincent even after Pendergast warns him that things are not as they seem. And when Adeyemi a woman who is near a saint as anyone can tell and no one can find any dirt on her is beheaded at the United Nations,  it seems Pendergast was right. It's the challenge of the kill the Decapitator seeks.

Bryce Harriman is summoned to Anton Ozmian's office where he is presented with a threat either he will print an article praising Grace Ozmian and retracting his earlier disparaging statements of her or he will go to jail for embezzling money from the charity he set up in memory of his deceased girlfriend who died from uterine cancer. Ozmian has already used his computer skills to take the money out of the Charities account and place it in an account in the Cayman Islands under Harriman's name and with a paper trail leading back to Harriman. At first Harriman bows under Ozmian's blackmail but then he gets the bright idea to investigate Ozmian and discovers that Ozmian brutally attacked a priest and was never punished for it. Unfortunately Harriman doesn't dig deeper before he confronts Ozmian and to Harriman's dismay Ozmian sets his blackmail scheme in motion and Harriman winds up in jail (Really to bad Harriman didn't go to Pendergast when Ozmian first blackmailed him). According to Ozmian the priest had raped him and that was why he was never charged with assaulting the priest even though he did it in front of a church full of people.

While Harriman sits in jail Ozmian sets his most daring plan into motion. Vincent and H are contacted supposedly by Pendergast and told to meet him at an abandoned asylum "King's Park" just outside the city. They are taken prisoner and used as bait to get Pendergast to come to King's Park alone. When Pendergast arrives H has already been beheaded and Vincent has bombs strapped to him. (H had forgiven Pendergast prior to this and told him he was officially off the shit list, I am still very sad that H is dead and wonder how that will impact Pendergast's job with the FBI). The only way Pendergast can save Vincent is to agree to play Ozmian's deranged hunting game. Gambling that Ozmian is trying to work through the time he spent at King's Park after his rape Pendergast engages in a deadly gamble he finds Ozmian's records in the basement and use them to lure him into a trap, allowing Pendergast to capture Ozmian alive. Because as Pendergast put it "I'm afraid I've developed an unfortunate reputation at the Bureau as an agent whose perps end up dead." Surprisingly enough Pendergast didn't have a clue to who the perp was until near the end of the book, again as Pendergast put it " Ozmian completely took me in. Until he tried to foist Hightower as a suspect on us, I hadn't the slightest inkling that he was a possible suspect.. THAT will trouble me for a very long time." They find the heads in a secret room in Ozmian's apartment mounted on plaques on the wall, there is a plaque at the end of the room with Pendergast's name on it.

The book ends on a happier note with Pendergast traveling to India to ask Constance to come home with him.


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