Extraction

With hints of voodoo and whiffs of decay, beneath a full moon and amid the heat and humidity of a New Orleans summer, the New York Times best-selling team Preston & Child (Douglas Preston and Lee Child) has painted a creepy, alternate version of the tooth fairy legend, a dark and moody tale involving a recluse living in a decrepit Creole mansion. In this chilling one-off, the writing duo has had some twisted fun with the childhood of their beloved recurring character FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast. In the New Orleans of the agent's youth, kids didn't put baby teeth under their pillow in exchange for the tooth fairy's coin. Instead, they dropped them into a copper pot on an old man's front porch during a full moon. No one wanted to find out what happened if they didn't give the spooky tooth fairy of the French Quarter "his due." All they knew was that the old man had to be appeased, according to legend. But when Pendergasts's younger brother, Diogenes, tries to pay his due with a baby tooth, Aloysius thinks his brother is being silly, and decides to intervene--to his regret. A story of brotherhood, fear, and a belief in the dark arts, Extraction has the old-timey feel of a campfire ghost story. Never has al dente pasta sounded so menacing. --Neal Thompson


Genre: Thriller