Cold Vengeance (novel)

Cold Vengeance is a thriller novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It was released on August 2, 2011 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the eleventh installment in the Special Agent Pendergast series and also the second novel in the Helen trilogy. The preceding novel is Fever Dream.

Plot
The conspiracy that murdered his wife is no more, but Pendergast will not rest until every last person involved is brought to justice. Chasing the final conspirator across the moors of Scotland, Pendergast stumbles into a far greater danger than he ever knew existed: the Covenant ("Der Bund" in German), a network of Nazis and Nazi sympathisers that have retreated from public view to influence events on a global scale.

Reception
"By picking up the action right where Fever Dream ends off, bestsellers Preston and Child sacrifice some accessibility in their 11th thriller featuring unconventional FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast. Pendergast is still reeling from discovering that the death of his beloved wife, Helen, 12 years before from a lion attack was actually the result of a cold-blooded scheme. Desperate to learn the truth about the people behind her murder, the agent embarks on a perilous hunting expedition with her brother, Judson Esterhazy. While in the wilds of Scotland, Esterhazy tells Pendergast a surprising secret that undercuts all the agent's assumptions about what actually happened. His usual sidekick, NYPD Lt. Vincent D'Agosta, plays a more muted role than usual, but Corrie Swanson, who assisted Pendergast in Still Life with Crows, returns to help. The authors do a good job of showing the lengths Pendergast is willing to go to in his quest, but because the book reads much like the middle of a trilogy, first-timers would do well to start elsewhere in the series. (Aug.)"

—Review by Publishers Weekly