The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

“Sometimes nonfiction is even more intriguing than fiction, and Preston certainly knows how to keep readers’ attention while taking them on a journey into the mysteries of the past.”

Author Douglas Preston, who often co-authors his bestselling books with Lincoln Child, writes exciting adventure novels based on mysterious historical events. And though many of his works are fiction, he often relies on his explorations and studies for his plot lines, ones he embellishes with plenty of twists and turns. His books, whether his solo efforts or his collaborations, are always more than just pure thrillers, they also weave in historical, scientific, and cultural aspects. The same can be said of his nonfiction.

“The Lost Tomb is a gathering of the origin stories of some of my most important novels,” writes Douglas Preston in the introduction to his book. “I want to emphasize, however, that all the stories in this book are absolutely true and have been meticulously vetted and confirmed, especially by the New Yorker magazine whose fact-checking department is legendary. There is not one word of fiction in this collection, even though some of the stories in the book will strike you as being crazy and as crazy and improbable as any of my thrillers. As Dean Koontz once observed, ‘we craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted.’ Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees, reminding us that the universe does not exist to fulfill our expectations.”

Preston, whose novels include The Lost City of the Monkey God, Cities of Gold, and, with Mario Spezi, The Monster of Florence, is a world traveler and adventurer who brings his experiences to his novels. According to his biography, his status as a reporter/author has allowed him exclusive journalistic access to the largest tomb in Egypt's Valley of the Kings and to explore what lay hidden in the booby-trapped Money Pit on Oak Island, as well to break the story of an extraordinary mass grave of animals killed by the asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous period and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

In this book, a collection of true stories he covers a wide range of fascinating subjects. The book is divided into such subjects as “Uncommon Murders,” “Unexplained Deaths,” “Unsolved Mysteries,” “Curious Crimes,” and “Old Bones.”

In “Curious Crimes,” his chapter titled Trail By Fury, he examines the case of Amanda Knox, an American who was accused and then finally acquitted of the murder of her roommate in Perugia, Italy, but not before the grisly case garnered tons of bad publicity. Preston explores what happened as well as how and why the internet spurred so much venom and vile toward her.

“In the first few weeks after her arrest, the anti-Amanda comments seem random and inchoate. But as time passed a more organized movement developed. . . . not all the bloggers at these sites appeared to fit the stereotype of losers who needed to get a life. Many appeared educated and intelligent. They wrote well. They were articulate. They were effective.”

These sites drove public opinion and influenced coverage by legitimate newspersons. Preston’s chapter on the case is a fascinating study not only about the murder itself but also about how the internet can impact people’s reactions.

In The Skeletons at the Lake, Preston delves into the genetic analysis of human skeletons found at a lake high in the Himalayas back in 1942. He notes that this discovery raises questions about why they were there, what killed them, and who they were. Preston delves into the subject with such questions as was the lake a place where holy men committed ritual suicide, could the dead have been a detachment of soldiers from a 13th-century army sent by the Sultan of Delhi in what was an ill-fated attempt to invade Tibet or did the dead belong to a group of Tibet bound traders who had lost their way?

Sometimes nonfiction is even more intriguing than fiction, and Preston certainly knows how to keep readers’ attention while taking them on a journey into the mysteries of the past.