Revisiting the "Relic"

In the nineties, “Relic” by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child was one of the first ‘specialist thrillers’ I ever read. I found a German version in my favourite bookshop around the time around which the movie based on the novel hit theatres in Germany and picked it up for good reading. I fell in love with the novel to a degree and read it several times in the following years. The sequel, “Reliquary”, was one of the first book I read in English and never in German at all. I followed the series for some more books, but I haven’t read any of them in years. That changed recently.

As a matter of fact, I never saw the movie in theatres, but bought the VHS tape when it came out (it was the nineties — VHS was still the norm). The first time I watched the movie, I was not elated. As a matter of fact, the movie’s changes make the sequel impossible, but there were other things as well. Characters which should have been there, especially Special Agent Pendergast from the FBI, were nowhere to be found. The whole story had been moved from New York City to Chicago (which didn’t hurt as much as the missing Pendergast — the series is following him, not another character from the first book).
The movie isn’t bad as a such — it is fun to watch and the monster is even still good today. It pays not to push your monster out in the bright light of day, darkness is your friend for every CGI-created creature. As a thriller with supernatural/dubitable science tropes, the movie is good, as it were — as long as you’ve never read the book it’s based on.
Recently, Roanoke Gaming, whose videos on the possible biology of movie and computer-game monsters are a delight, did a video on the monster of “Relic” (the movie) and this inspired me to look up the book on Amazon — learning that the “Agent Pendergast series” I followed for six to eight books has capped out at twenty! I decided to buy the first three as e-books, “Relic” and “Reliquary” as a collection, “Cabinet of Curiosities” on its own. Those three are, as a matter of fact, my favourites in the series.

I dived into “Relic” again and was in for a surprise. Many books I’ve loved in the past have become far less of a favourite to me by now for various reasons. “Relic”, however, does still hold up. Thrillers need tension and “Relic” delivers it from the well-done and necessary prologue right up to the suggestion of the sequel at the end. It makes you love the characters and worry for them. It creates situations that are both believable (by the technology of the nineties) and tense.
Despite the fact that I have read “Relic” at least ten times, if not more often, I immediately got caught by the story. Not because I remembered nothing — I was still very aware of the big strokes of the story —, but because the storytelling was excellent. The characters were likeable and easy to imagine. The situations were grounded, the characters acting as one would expect — an FBI agent will have a different reaction to a horrid body than a doctorate student. The story evolved the way it should, pushing tension and stakes, with enough twists and turns to make things interesting.
Yes, many things which are part of the story wouldn’t work like that in the modern world. Especially smartphones are a game-changer when comparing eighties and nineties movies to modern-day ones. Access to information and easy ways to call for help can kill tension quickly. The time in which the book is set — then the modern day — doesn’t offer such help. Yet, that doesn’t matter — within the setting, the story works and not every story has to be transposable to the modern world.

Especially the climax of the book is intense and set in several different places at the same time. Preston and Child handle the different viewpoints well, knowing precisely when to switch from one to the other as to keep ‘he who walks on all fours’ in the focus. There is a constant feeling of dread, a fear of where the monster will be next. There’s additional dangers for the biggest group as well, not only are they the most likely target — so many brains to feast on —, they’re also underground and the water is rising (as it so often is during strong rain in New York City). The museum is on lock-down, so many people, most of whom are not trained to fight, are locked in with the monster. The few heroes inside have their hands full, trying to keep the innocent protected and get the creature down.
Leading up to this situation, we have more than just physical danger. There are several murders (albeit one stays undiscovered for several days — right until the big night of the exhibition opening), but there’s also a lot of museum politics. The need of the director to boost visitors’ numbers. The PR manager’s need to keep control of the narrative. The animosities between different departments and curators. All of this undermines the most logical actions under the circumstances — closing down the museum, doing a complete swipe, moving the exhibition opening. Those additional problems, however, are very grounded, because that is what it is like out there. So is a local FBI agent with a plan for promotion doing his best to shoulder aside the ‘stranger’ from Louisiana, despite the fact that Pendergast has the better plan. All of this is very human, all of this is realistic. All of it helps making the climax even more tense.

Even thirty years after the original release, “Relic” is a good book to read that will draw you in and make you worry for the main characters. The technology might be ancient by now (imagine computer systems run on key input alone — no Windows standard then), but even it does its job to add to the story. It was so clearly written at that time and is so clearly ‘top of the technology’ for that time as well. If you liked “Relic”, I would at least recommend the sequel “Reliquary” as well. Personally, I find “Cabinet of Curiosities” close to them, too, as two of the characters from “Relic” and “Reliquary” in addition to Pendergast appear there as well. All books are a good read and all are easily available for you, both in book and in audio-book form.