Pendergast, Douglas Preston
Pendergast, Douglas Preston
15 Rating(s)
List: $31.99 | Sale: $22.40
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Pendergast
The Beginning

Bestseller

Author: Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Unabridged: 12 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/27/2026

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling duo Preston and Child comes the Agent Pendergast origin story—a golden opportunity for longtime fans and new readers to learn about Agent Pendergast’s strange and shocking first case.

It only took six months for the life of Special Agent Dwight Chambers to crumble around him. First, he lost his partner, and then, tragically, his wife. Returning to work at the New Orleans Field Office, Chambers is dismayed to find himself saddled with mentoring a brand new FBI agent—a certain A. X. L. Pendergast. As Chambers tries to pull himself together, his enigmatic and exasperating junior partner pulls an outrageous stunt that gets both of them suspended.

Pendergast welcomes the banishment, because it gives him the opportunity to investigate a peculiar murder in Mississippi that has captured his fancy. Chambers grudgingly goes along. What starts off as a whimsical quest swiftly turns into a terrifying pursuit, as Chambers and Pendergast uncover a string of grisly, ritualistic killings that defy any known serial killer profile.
 
Thanks in large part to Pendergast’s brilliance and unorthodox methods, they solve the case and find the killer… and that is when the true horror begins.

About Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston is the author of more than thirty books, both fiction and nonfiction, more than twenty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. He has worked as an editor at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and taught nonfiction writing at Princeton University. His first novel, Relic, coauthored with Lincoln Child, was made into a movie, and launched the famed Pendergast series of novels. His recent nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, is also being made into a film. In addition to books, Preston writes about archaeology and paleontology for the New Yorker, National Geographic, and Smithsonian.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Bill on February 06, 2026

An origin of sorts. There are still a lot of mysteries in Pendergast’s past that would be interesting to see the authors delve into. A great jumping on point for new readers.......more

Goodreads review by James on February 09, 2026

I think I'm in love w/ Aloysius Pendergast. He's a little bit charming, romantic, creative, brilliant, dangerous, and lightning fast. I'd trust him with my life! Learning how he joined the FBI, plus one of his first big cases, really helped bring a lot together. I've been trying to figure out how ol......more

Goodreads review by Sue on December 30, 2025

Have you been reading Pendergast books for a while, entranced by this man, his shadowy background and almost otherworldly skills, involved in solving often peculiar, often shocking crimes? Or have you heard of Pendergast but read little of the Preston and Child series? Have I got a book to recommend......more

Goodreads review by Alan on December 07, 2025

This review is for an ARC copy received from the publisher through NetGalley. Preston and Child take us back to the year 1994, when Agent Pendergast was new to the FBI, stationed in his home town of New Orleans. For his first real action, he discovers an old cold case ties in with a recent killing, a......more

Goodreads review by Bob on November 25, 2025

***Slow And Unevenly Paced Through The First 70% But Finishes Strong! Pendergast: The Beginning is one of those books that’s both satisfying and somewhat disappointing at the same time. As an early but lapsed fan of the series in recent years, I looked forward to reading this book in order to get a c......more

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