Oh, Momma........

"I recall my fleeting instants in Savannah as the taste of a cup charged to the brim." (Henry James)

Charged much like a quick-beat of a thunderous bolt of lightning rippin' through the nighttime skies. Bloodless definitely breaks the silence. It's what we all need about now to change the channel of life from oppressive reality to the Isle of Wonky in a heartbreak.

Now don't be scared off by the #20 in the Pendergast Series. You can jump onto this raft and sail away clearly. Preston and Child open the door on this one without a lot of extraneous baggage from the past. Just sit back and sip from a cold glass of Sweet Tea........and leave the light on.

Let's get acquainted with Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast of the FBI and his Native American partner, Special Agent Armstrong Coldmoon. Pendergast is a highly gifted agent with a remarkable intuitive nature. Always gets his criminals. Doesn't often fit into recommended procedures. Coldmoon has an uncanny streaming nature with Lakota Spirits. He brings his own dynamics to the table. And there's Pendergast's ward, Constance Green, who steps forward into the spotlight this time with a heavy impact in this storyline.

The team is being flown into Savannah after a successful experience in Florida. Police Commander Alanna Delaplane is perplexed, and rightfully so, when bodies start to turn up drained completely of blood. Daisy Fayette, local Savannah historian, begins to elbow the story into the dark areas of the Savannah Vampire folklore. As bad news travels fast, a team of Netflix documentarians set up shop in Savannah with cameras ready. A famous medium/author is not far behind. But it's gonna take a supersonic effort in order to solve this one with vibes from Bizarro World. Oh, yeah.......

Preston and Child break open this storyline with a tantalizing scenario from a Northwest Orient flight to Seattle in 1971. The plane is being hijacked by a man threatening to blow up the craft if his needs are not met. Said man parachutes with said money. Only Preston and Child can pull off this confusion with an electrically charged twist-aroo at the end. Gotta grab this one......and fast.

I received a copy of Bloodless through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Grand Central Publishing and to Preston and Child for the opportunity.

'Bloodless' by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is the 20th installment in the bestselling series featuring the character of F.B.I. Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

The story starts with a blast from the past, as a man in 1971 is hijacking a plane. He lets the passengers deplane, gets a ransom payment, then orders the plane to take off with a skeleton crew for freedom, but jumps out of the plane somewhere in the Pacific Northwest.

We then fast forward to the present day, as Pendergast, his ward and assistant Constance Green, and his F.B.I. partner Agent Coldmoon head to Savannah where a strange case has been developing.

A man has been found dead, his body drained of all blood. It's followed by another unrelated body, dead by the same means.

With very little clues to go on, the trio immerses themselves in the supernatural legends of Savannah, including the infamous "Savannah Vampire."

Following all the threads will lead Pendergast and crew all over Savannah, as they find the killer may not be of this Earth, and the mystery may also intersect with the legend of D.B. Cooper.

'Bloodless' progresses along rather slowly, at first, kind of like moving on a hot humid Southern summer day. There are scenes relevant to the mystery, but a lot of red herrings, and a lot of conversations between Pendergast and Constance that probably make more sense if you've read other books in the series.

I didn't really connect with the story or the characters until later in the book, when the mystery takes an extreme sci-fi turn I definitely didn't see coming. That part of the story was riveting.

I'm giving 'Bloodless' by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child 3.5 stars out of 5. Trigger warning for scenes of animal violence and some gruesome kills.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Phew, what a ride it's been. 20 books in (plus the standalones that tie in with character crossovers, so more like 23-24), and I still love this series.

Potential spoilery hints ahead. I haven't given any specifics, but if you don't want to even have a hint of what's going on, please stop reading!

But this one hit like a ton of bricks. It jumped the shark quite a bit with its main antagonist/plot, and the ending left much to be desired, with a seriously disappointing ending to a long-developed storyline that left a bad taste in my mouth. Much of the story and plot in this one was made moot by later events, to the point where the book felt bloated a bit.

I know things have to change to keep the story moving forward, but not at the expense of what you've been working towards for soooo many books.

I guess we'll see how it plays out. I'll still pick up the next one... I am invested in this series and in these authors, after all. But I'm not nearly as excited about the series any more after this entry. I've never given an entry in this series such a low rating...

Just wasn't my favorite in the series. As always, with a series like this, please start at the beginning. Jumping in here wouldn't provide you with the context you need to understand who these characters are, what makes them tick, or the emotional effects of the events of this book.

"Agent Pendergast faces his most unexpected challenge yet when bloodless bodies begin to appear in Savannah, GA, in this installment of a #1 New York Times bestselling series.

A fabulous heist:
On the evening of November 24, 1971, D.B. Cooper hijacked Flight 305 - Portland to Seattle - with a fake bomb, collected a ransom of $200,000, and then parachuted from the rear of the plane, disappearing into the night…and into history.

A brutal crime steeped in legend and malevolence:
Fifty years later, Agent Pendergast takes on a bizarre and gruesome case: in the ghost-haunted city of Savannah, Georgia, bodies are found with no blood left in their veins - sowing panic and reviving whispered tales of the infamous Savannah Vampire.

A case like no other:
As the mystery rises along with the body count, Pendergast and his partner, Agent Coldmoon, race to understand how - or if - these murders are connected to the only unsolved skyjacking in American history. Together, they uncover not just the answer...but an unearthly evil beyond all imagining."

This ticks so many of my boxes, and in particular D.B. Copper! Though Loki "perhaps" solved that one for us...

I never miss an Agent Pendergast. The books are a mix of campy, supernatural, and horror--and the strange appearance and personality of Aloysius Pendergast.
The novels aren't for everyone, but Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child have a huge fan base. The first in this long series is Relic, which was made into a movie in 1997.

What I liked about this one is that the novel has a connection to the famous and unsolved D.B. Cooper case.

These books are not literature; they are an amalgam of horror, supernatural, and suspense. I liked the earlier books better for the most part, largely for characters who are no longer part of the series, but I can't resist giving each new one a try.

The information about D.B. Cooper (even if the novel is fiction) made me curious about elements in the unsolved 1971 real life case. I'm not sure I like the importance of Constance in the later books.

Read in April.

NetGalley/Grand Central Publishing

Suspense. Aug. 17, 2021. Print length: 400 pages.

The Pendergast novels all proceed as if there might be a logical solution to the crime...until they don't. Bloodless, in about the last quarter of the book, went way out into left field to explain both a historical mystery (D.B. Cooper) and a series of "vampire-like" murders in current-day Savannah, Georgia. Bloodless may have done the literary version of "jumping the shark.." Although I enjoyed the novel as a whole, I was incredulous at the authors' explanation of events. Because I did enjoy the majority of the story, 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4. I am grateful to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the opportunity to read Bloodless in return for an honest review.

I've been reading this series from the very beginning, so my opinions are a blend of what I think about this particular book and how I feel it fits into the overall Pendergast world. I've missed the partnership between Pendergast and D'Agosta, his old friend from New York. Pendergast needs someone from the "normal" world to play off of and to keep him from going too far off the deep end. Agent Coldmoon is a good substitute, I think his character adds to the dynamics of the story. I'm enjoying the discreet mysteries, there were so many books tied to the arc of Pendergast's past, his wife, that I missed the smaller cases where there was resolution. That being said, this mystery is a doozy! Mild spoilers here... having the antagonist be a vampire would have been less outlandish than what was really going on!

I was truly surprised and confounded by this mystery. Preston and Child really went out there this time. It's impossible to talk about what truly happened to the bloodless bodies without ruining it, but summer in the South has a whole new meaning! I'm going to be honest about what eventually happens to Constance, she has never been a character I liked or enjoyed having in the books. If she never comes back, I'd be just fine. This was a great addition the world of weird, I'm so happy these books keep coming out year after year!

Straight off the plane from "Crooked River" Pendergast and crew are thrown into a case in Savannah, Georgia. "Bloodless" is the newest installment of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Pendergast series. What FBI Agent Pendergast,, Agent Coldmoon and Constance find in Savannah are bodies totally void of any blood. Rumors are flying and concerned citizens are worried the tales of the Savannah Vampire may be true! Flying coast to coast to try and find the answers, has Pendergast met his match?

I'd like to thank the Publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I am not usually impressed by time travel, vampires and such in my reading.
However, I did find this to be well written and intriguing to say the least.. I would recommend this to any fan of this genre.

There are two mysteries in this novel. The first is the story of a brazen hijacking of a plane for ransom. The infamous D.B. Cooper received a $200,000 payout and then parachuted out of the plane, never to be heard from again.

The second takes place in Savannah, Georgia, where bloodless bodies begin to appear. People think it may be the return of the legendary Savannah Vampire.

Together with Agent Coldmoon, FBI agent Pendergast discovers a device that can return people to different periods in history. He must use it to get to the bottom of mysterious insects who drain people of blood.

Constance Greene, Pendergast's ward, also goes searching for what happened to her family in the 1800's. This leads into the premise (I believe) for the next novel.

Very exciting and fast-paced, I can't wait for the next book.

On Thanksgiving 1971 the infamous DB Cooper hijacking surprised the nation. On a flight from Portland to Seattle, a man carrying a bomb alerted flight attendants he was hijacking the plane and demanded $200,000. After collecting his ransom, and instructing the plane the fly to Mexico City, Cooper parachuted from the plane's airlift and has evaded capture ever since. Half a century later Agents Pendergrast and Coldmoon are called to investigate a string of mysterious murders in the reportedly haunted city of Savannah. Bodies are showing up completely drained of all their blood; rumors are abound that the legendary Savannah Vampire is on the loose and out for blood. These two cases are intertwined and the final results could be out of this world.

I equally enjoyed and was caught off guard by this book. This is book 20 in Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Pendergast series of novels, but it's the first one I've read. I was wholly coming into the story believing it was going to be a straight up FBI investigative thriller, and I think the first 2/3s of the book were written that way. It does have elements of the supernatural with the vampire and ghost hunting aspects, but the last 1/3 of this book is entirely Sci-fi/Fantasy. I wasn't upset by it, as the story is engaging and kept me invested. But I will say, I wasn't totally prepared for the sudden switch. Since this is my first book in the series, I am not sure if that mix of genres is par for the course or just this book alone, but it was a mix that really worked! I also appreciated that this book felt like a stand alone novel. I didn't feel like I needed to read the previous 19 books in order to understand the backstory or personality of any of the characters.

"Bloodless" is well written and imaginative. It's plot was engaging, and structurally flowed well. I enjoyed the characters, and found them all to be distinct and three dimensional. I wished we could've spent more time with Miss Frost, as I found her delightful, but if that is the only downside of this book then that's pretty good.

I myself am interested in the DB Cooper case, and have done a lot of reading and research about it. I really enjoyed how Preston and Lincoln put their own spin on explaining the case, and found their reasonings to be plausible...well, all but one.

I would recommend this book to fans of the Pendergast series and to Preston and Lincoln newbies alike. Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for giving me an advanced copy.

Another wonderful addition to the Pendergast series that starts with an unusual airline hijacking.in 1971. In present day Pendergast, Constance and Coldmoon, much to his chagrin, are detoured to Savannah after finishing their latest case. Someone has been killing people by draining all the blood from their bodies, and one of the victims is the manager of an old hotel. What do these events have in common you might wonder, but all is tied together beautifully, as you’re swept up in yet another quirky, suspenseful and enjoyable mystery book from Preston and Child. And from the way it ends I can’t wait to read the next installment.

I've read several books by these authors and have always enjoyed everything I've read, so I was looking forward to reading this book. I must say it didn't disappoint. This book was easy to read and fast paced and kept me wanting to read more. I highly recommend this book.

Spoiler Alert, I love all of the books that these authors write, together and separately. So I am a bit biased.
That being said, if you follow the Pendergast book series you will love seeing the human sides of the main characters.
For those not familiar with these authors, there is always a bit of fantasy / science fiction thrown in. I find it intriguing. It opens my mind to new possibilities. I love Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. so I totally by in to stories with different beings and this series provides that.
So relax and enjoy some time with a good book.

Savannah was the perfect spot for this hauntingly original story. Agent Pendergast and his Ward Constance Green and Agent Coldmoon explore these conflicting stories to bring order back to it’s dignified beauty

Of all the Pendergast adventures this was more curious than the cabinet of curiosities and more dangerously attacked then by the monster in the Relic.

Enjoy it until the end. The end of many things we have enjoyed through Pendergast’s career may now be quite different.

So much fun as always, and Pendergast is always so quirky and cool. A perfect summer weekend novel, and another slam-dunk for the team. Happy to talk it up, and anxious for the next one

**Thank you to Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review. This book will release August 17, 2021.**

*“I would think that someone with your appreciation for spirits will find Savannah to be the most shadow-haunted place in all of America.”*

With this, the twentieth installment in the Pendergast series, Preston & Child have invariably done it again, and better than I recall in recent years. I won't spend too much time rehashing this (because I don't want to be too negative, and we want to get to the good stuff!), but after the Helen Trilogy, the books just didn't quite strike me like they used to. And honestly, I think that was bound to happen—they're on BOOK TWENTY, after all, and they've been writing this series since just after I was born—and not everything can be as brilliantly horrifying as the masterpiece that is *Still Life With Crows*. However, with their more recent books, this one included, they seem to be sliding back toward their horror-supernatural origins and I couldn't be happier!

*Bloodless* was absolutely packed with elements that I loved. I was initially struck by the opening scenes because to my recollection, none of the books in the series so far have begun with such a lengthy, fictionalized recreation of a real event: in this case, D. B. Cooper's Thanksgiving Eve plane hijacking. Chalk it up to me being a millennial, but I had never heard of the event. But as I read on, I was not intrigued so much by that particular mystery, but by how the authors were going to tie it in to murders seemingly perpetrated by a vampire in modern-day Savannah, Georgia—yet tie it in they did, masterfully. I had several laugh out loud moments, as well as two that caused me to go "Ooooh" out loud, thanks to Pendergast and Constance's assessments of Southern history—that wasn't something I had initially expected to find here, and I kind of appreciated that they were included. The red herrings even drew me in, especially that one. Oh, you'll know it when you get there.

While I do miss D'Agosta, I've really grown to like Coldmoon. He also serves as an excellent foil to Pendergast, and despite his keen desire to get to the Denver field office, I hope he shows up in the next installment. His attitude is great. Constance was more fascinating that I recall her being recently, and I found her chapters—especially the ones where she converses with the proprietress of the hotel at which they're staying to be some of the most compelling, which makes sense, as they're truly central to solving the whole mystery. The reclusive woman herself is also quite a character with an intriguing history, and it could have been neat to see more of that kinship she seemed to have with Constance.

I wasn't quite as interested in the subplots of the documentary crew and the author who had a bone to pick with the director, but they were engaging enough; I just wish they'd had slightly more bearing on the plot than being nuisances and tangentially involved.

This book ends in a spectacular way with a level of strangeness I feel like I haven't seen since *Wheel of Darkness*. I have a feeling that the way in which this all ultimately plays out is going to drum up a LOT of conversation among Pendergast fans. You are truly not going to see the end of this one coming; it may be the wildest thing the authors have ever done. The fact that I'm not going to be able to chat with fellow fans about it until release is killing me! I can't stop thinking of the implications it holds for future books, and I have two burning questions regarding things I'm not entirely sure about! I may have to reread this again, and soon, just to see if I can give myself satisfactory answers. But all that aside, I honestly have no idea where the series could possibly go from here... and that's pretty exciting.

I'll admit it now: I'll never stop holding out hope that Preston & Child will one day fully return to the creeping-dread-horror and supernatural-science plots that first caused me to fall in love with their books fourteen years ago (FOURTEEN YEARS AGO?!). But even without those trappings, they write some damn solid thrillers that I'll never stop reading, either.

This book is definitely one of Preston and Child’s weirdest books - it’s almost like a Stephen King book. Pendergast, Constance and Agent Coldmoon are together again to solve a case linked to a true life case about D. B. Cooper. It’s interesting but really bizarre. Once again the authors entice the reader to look forward to their next book - what happens to Constance and where us Pendergast?

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What do D.B. Cooper, time travel, and haunted house documentaries have in common? You’ll have to read Bloodless to discover the odd ties that bind. I haven’t missed a Pendergast novel yet, and I don’t plan to anytime soon. Bloodless felt like going back to the beginning with Pendergast in that it captured all of the best elements of those beginning novels. A peculiar mystery, Pendergast acting mysteriously and making connections others don’t, and a blend of science and strange to tie it all together. After wrapping their previous case, Pendergast, Constance and Coldmoon are heading home only to be diverted to Savannah, Georgia and a very strange series of crimes that leave victims without a drop of blood left in them. Of course, this is just too interesting of a case to ignore and Pendergast and Constance dive right in, with Coldmoon reluctantly joining the hunt. Like Pendergast, I couldn’t walk away from the mystery either and if you’re like me, you’ll love this one.

Pendergast is back!! In this 20th installment by Preston & Child we find Pendergast, Constance & Coldmoon
being sent to assist on a case in beautiful, historic, mysterious Savannah where bodies have turned up
drained of blood - exactly the type of case for Pendergast to solve. Full of twists, very strange
occurrences, and a crazy ending! Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.