The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston

Frock - Margo Green's former PhD mentor, evolutionary biologist, retired from the museum. Bill Smithback - journalist, now crime reporter working for the New York Post.Margo Green - now assistant curator of the New York Museum of Natural History Police Captain Vincent D'Agosta - New York Police Department, initially in charge of the investigation.After going underground, the group kills them with an explosion, vitamin D infused water and a flood. Kawakita also gave the drug to the people who were to become the Wrinklers, later made into his tribe by Frock. In the end, it is revealed that the Wrinklers are led by Frock, who has refined a modified version of the Mbwun plant, created by Kawakita to regain the use of his legs. The mystery soon leads underground to the Mole people, and even deeper towards enigmatic beings called the Wrinklers. Major characters from the original book team up with new ones to solve the puzzle. When further decapitated bodies follow, there is suspicion of a second Mbwun monster. Two headless skeletons are found in the Humboldt Kill.

The story picks up where the epilogue of Relic left off. The book is the second in the Special Agent Pendergast series. The legacy of the blood-maddened Mbwun lives on in Reliquary, but the focus is shifted from the original museum setting to the tunnels beneath the streets of New York City.

Reliquary is the 1997 New York Times best-selling sequel to Relic, by American authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston