Smithback, who had dined very well and consumed an alarming quantity of wine, was sitting with Black. Now the group was arranged around the barge in lethargic contemplation of the meal, awaiting landfall at the trailhead. They had dined around the aluminum table, toasting the meal with a crisp Orvieto. This remarkable accomplishment, achieved somehow on the shabby gas grill, had silenced even Black's undertone of complaints. Thirty minutes before, Luigi Bonarotti had served a meal of cognac-braised, applewood-smoked quail with grapefruit and wilted arugula leaves. The sun hung low over the Grand Bench, with Neanderthal Cove appearing on the right, and the distant opening of Last Chance Bay to the left. Now they were alone on the green expanse of lake, walled in by thousand-foot bluffs and slickrock desert. The expedition had entered into a great mystical world of stone, and a cathedral silence closed around them. Gradually, the powerboats, the shrieking jetskis, the garish houseboats had all dropped away. The wide prow of the barge cut easily through the turquoise surface of Lake Powell, engines throbbing slightly, the water hissing along the pontoons. Simultaneous audio.T HREE HOURS LATER, THE L ANDLOCKED Laura had left the chaos of Wahweap Marina fifty miles behind. Fans of the authors' similarly inspired, and similarly metronomic, scientific textbooks-cum-thrillers should find this one much to their taste. This is a novel in which the archeological niceties of ancient black-on-yellow micaceous pottery are as important to plot as the caliber of the gun the heroine wields. The authors display deep affection for the pulp they're recycling, talent for exciting set pieces-a hazardous ascent along a ridge toward Quivira and the flash-flooding of the canyon harboring the city are showcases of action writing-and, always their ace, the ability to infuse every aspect of their story with authentic techno-scientific lore. Playing it safe, Preston and Child take no missteps as Nora finds an old letter from her long-missing father with clues to Quivira's location leads an expedition of central-casting types (a leathery old cowboy, a beautiful female photographer, the jokey journalist who figured in Relic and Reliquary, etc.) after much difficulty, discovers Quivira, which is revealed as a repository of ancient evil and encounters death by way of the Native American witches who threatened her at the novel's start. The novel has a clockwork feel, from its first tick-the spooky stalking of archeologist Nora Kelly on an isolated New Mexican ranch-to its last tock. With four high-concept thrillers behind them, from 1995's Relic to last year's Riptide, the authors know what buttons to push and levers to yank-perhaps too well. The adventure is marginally higher than the suspense in Preston and Child's sturdy new tale of scientific derring-do, concerning a search for Quivira, the legendary Anasazi Indian City of Gold.
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