"Some of the scariest things happening today are taking place in science laboratories deep inside museums and research facilities. The public doesn't hear about them," coauthors Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston disclosed on their website. "So [we] paw through medical and scientific journals, looking for really gruesome, frightening stuff. Reality is always more terrifying than fiction, you know. We talk to the scientists who are working on the cutting edge. And we've come across stuff that would scare the pants off you. Scientific discoveries that, if you knew about them, would really make you nervous." From this raw material, Preston and Child have drawn on their backgrounds in natural history, anthropology, and horror to craft some of the most believable and terrifying technothrillers of the 1990s. From a mysterious "monster" terrorizing a museum to a booby-trapped island filled with hidden treasure, the plots of Preston and Child are...