Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston is an American author best known for co-writing the Agent Pendergast series with Lincoln Child, following eccentric FBI agent Aloysius Pendergast through cases that combine forensic thriller plotting with gothic horror, secret history, and outsized set pieces. The partnership began with Relic in 1995, drawing on Preston's years working at the American Museum of Natural History, where he wrote about the museum's collections before turning that insider knowledge into the novel's setting and premise; Relic was adapted into a 1997 film.

Beyond the Pendergast novels, Preston writes extensively on his own, including bestselling narrative nonfiction such as The Lost City of the Z-adjacent The Lost City of the Monkey God, about a real expedition to a legendary Honduran ruin, and thrillers co-written with other authors. He and Child have sustained the Pendergast series for close to three decades, alternating and blending standalone mysteries with a longer arc involving Pendergast's family history and nemeses.

A new reader should start with Relic for the series' most straightforwardly thriller-shaped entry, though Preston and Child themselves have suggested The Cabinet of Curiosities as an alternate jumping-on point once new readers want the fuller Pendergast mythology.