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Popular Culture Review
Parisian police, so much extolled for acumen, are cunning, but no more. There is
no method in their proceedings, beyond the method of the moment” (290). He
lambasts the police for failing to look at the evidence of the crime logically; if a
crime is obvious, they will probably be able to catch the criminal due to their
possession of cunning; however, if the crime occurs under mysterious means,
they do not have the rational processes in place to deduce the identity of the
perpetrator of the crime.
Pendergast also does not respect most law enforcement’s abilities to solve a
crime; however, Pendergast’s distrust is more clearly directed at the machine of
government bureaucracy and the figures representing that incompetent
impediment to justice. This difference is made apparent by his recruitment in
two of the novels of two hard-working, very capable, beat-down-by-the-system
policemen Patrick O’Shaughnessy and Vincent D’Agosta. Cemy explains that
the modem detective’s role, as invented by Dupin’s willingness to buck the
system, is “in the struggle between modem society and the forces of darkness
and corruption that continually threaten it” (52). These two officers have both
been cast aside by the NYPD most likely because of their unwillingness to
conform to the bureaucratic incompetence that has swallowed most government
facilities. There are repeated references in both books to the inadequacy of the
people in charge to handle real crises when they occur. Pendergast, by choosing
these two men as his assistants in solving these difficult crimes, makes a
statement of disregard for the pecking order as dictated by law enforcement as
an entity and hence subtly indicates his lack of regard for its practices.
Poe’s detective and horror stories were written over 170 years ago;
however, his prevalently conspicuous presence in these three novels by Douglas
Preston and Lincoln Child: Cabinet o f Curiosities^ Still Life with Crows, and
Brimstone is undeniable to the point that without Poe’s body of work to draw
from, it is possible that their writing would not exist with the historical and
literary depth it possesses and that make it an extraordinarily interesting series of
novels. The use of direct allusion to Poe’s horror tales is only the most
superficial influence of Poe on this fictional series. When looked at a little more
closely, the mark of Poe in the constmction of both the horror and detective
elements of the Pendergast novels is just as obvious as, and probably more
significant than, the direct allusions.
Gothic imagery derived from “Cask of Amontillado,” “Fall of the House of
Usher,” “Masque of the Red Death,” and “Pit and the Pendulum” provides the
textured backdrop that provides many of the horrific settings found in Preston
and Child’s novels. It is against elements drawn from these archaic and eerie
backdrops that the evil plot events of entombment and dismemberment recall the
diabolical actions of characters in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black
Cat.” Subsequently, the insane characters responsible for much of the carnage in
the modem stories of Preston and Child seem to be heirs to the madness of their
predecessors found in Poe’s work. Pendergast’s evil twin and the freaky man-