Luke Dumas

The Paleontologist by Luke Dumas is a recommended psychological thriller.

Dr. Simon Nealy has returned to his hometown, Wrexham, Pennsylvania to become the Curator of paleontology at the Hawthorne Museum of Natural History. His sister disappeared when the two were at the museum as children, so many complicated emotions surround his return. The museum itself is a crumbling ruin and closed due to the pandemic lockdown so no income is coming in. As Simon tries to acclimate to his new positions and set the paleontology department into some sort of order, it seems there is some supernatural element or creature loose in the museum. Either he is loosing his mind or something else is going on and Simon must try to find out the answer.

The characters are fully realized and they all are portrayed as unique individuals with strengths and flaws. The backstory of Simon and the traumatic experiences he has gone through immediately makes him a sympathetic character.

The quality of the writing is excellent and Dumas does a credible job including the scientific information in the plot. With initial comparisons to Preston and Child's Relic, I had high hopes for The Paleontologist. I stuck with it based on the pluses: dinosaur bones, a creepy museum, and a childhood trauma tied into the museum.

Admittedly, the rough spots right at the start were very off-putting with Covid and masking at the forefront of the entire novel. (Authors, please leave this out of novels.) Then something was mentioned when it would have been better to simply provide the facts with a nod to the readers intelligence to figure it out. As the narrative continued it was soon clear that there were simply too many scattered subplots and one of them required an inordinate about of suspension of disbelief for this reader. It is enjoyable, but not the page-turner I was hoping for.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria via NetGalley.
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The Paleontologist by Luke Dumas is a compelling narrative that just seems to be too busy at times. Far more positives than negatives, though I think that is largely going to depend on the reader's willingness to share in the work.

I found this to be generally as good as his debut, A History of Fear, just a bit too cramped to be more satisfying. I also want to make clear that while I think it was perhaps a bit too ambitious, Dumas did manage to make the main storylines coexist very well, plus interject some social commentary without it interrupting the story. So he succeeded more than he failed, I just think it would have been easier, as a reader, to become fully invested if everything had been streamlined. By that I mostly mean that I felt pulled out of one feeling into another too often and in different directions.

Don't get me wrong, I never even considered not finishing and I did care about the characters, which is a big thing for me. While not every surprise was a complete shock, everything retained the suspenseful feel because of what was going on around it. There is no question I will read his future work.

I would recommend this to most readers of thrillers with the heads up that it is not a narrow plotline through the book but a broad one with various important subplots (or maybe a co-plot?).

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (mehr)