I have read several of the books written by collaborating authors Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child. Their career began after Preston spent 8 years working at the Natural History Museum, which resulted in the book non-fiction book Dinosaurs in the Attic.
As fate would have it, Lincoln Child was an editor at St. Martin's Press at the time and worked on the book. Preston quit the museum and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to write full time. Child left the editing business, went to work for MetLife as a system analyst, and turned his attention to his own writing.
It would be many more years before the two would decide to write a novel together, Relic. This was subsequently turned into an unfortunate mishap of a movie which almost ruined their careers forever. Its a good thing that I read the book prior to seeing the movie. I can't imagine anyone thinking highly of these guys if they'd only seen the movie.
Not to say that I didn't like the movie as your average run-of-the-mill action-suspense film, it met that goal just fine. But it did not do the novel justice and the script departed from the original storyline many times which was disappointing. I thought the novel was quite dramatic and suspenseful as it was and I perferred the book's ending.
They run a website that offers information about their collaborative projects, but both authors have also produced independent works. I just finished reading one by Douglas Preston – Tyrannosaur Canyon.
It has been compared to Jurassic Park but I don't think the two books are alike at all. They both have plots that involve dinosaurs but the similarity stops there. It was a decent read and it kept my interest. It reminded me of a mish-mash of four or five other books.
The novel does have moments that leave you racing to the next page and if you like this genre then I definitely wouldn't pass it up. I left it lying around after I finished it and DH picked it up. At first he was leery of reading it when he found out that it was by the same author who wrote Relic (because he saw the movie first of course).
The book does tend to touch on a few current news-worthy topics. There is an interesting note about the storyline on the book's tour site- Preston comments:
"When I was writing Tyrannosaur Canyon, I briefly considered having them find a T. Rex fossil containing some original tissue. But I dropped the idea because I didn't want to become the laughing stock of the scientific world. One week after I turned in the final manuscript, they made this astounding discovery: another example of truth being stranger than fiction."
