Summary of The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston and David Grann: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

By GP SUMMARY

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Summary of The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston and David Grann: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

 

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Douglas Preston, the #1 bestselling author of The Lost City of the Monkey God, shares the discovery of an Egyptian tomb with dozens of sealed burial chambers. The tomb reveals tales of pirate treasure, mysterious deaths, and archaeological mysteries. Preston's journalistic explorations have taken him to Honduran jungles, American Southwest archaeological sites, and Italy's haunted hills. The Lost Tomb offers a compelling collection of true stories about buried treasure, enigmatic murders, lost tombs, and other fascinating stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookRix
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9783755463122

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Summary of The Lost Tomb

A

Summary of Douglas Preston and David Grann’s book

And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

GP SUMMARY

Summary of The Lost Tomb by Douglas Preston and David Grann: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder

By GP SUMMARY© 2023, GP SUMMARY.

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Author: GP SUMMARY

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Editing, proofreading: GP SUMMARY

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This is an unofficial summary & analysis of Douglas Preston and David Grann’s The Lost Tomb: And Other Real-Life Stories of Bones, Burials, and Murder designed to enrich your reading experience.

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Copyright 2023. All rights reserved.

DAVID GRANN

THE FIRST THING you notice about these thirteen remarkable true tales by Douglas Preston is that they all contain elements of intrigue. There is a story about the unexplained deaths of a group of skiers in the Ural Mountains, and another about a hunt for treasure that has consumed seekers for nearly two centuries, costing millions of dollars and killing half a dozen people. Still another tale explores one of the most harrowing cases in the annals of crime—a string of inexplicable killings in the bucolic hills of Florence, which has generated a bewildering array of suspects. Some of the mysterious incidents Preston probes reach back thousands of years, involving the fate of ancient civilizations—where they came from and why they suddenly vanished. The evidence now consists of artifacts and bones.

Not only are the subjects in this book fascinating, but so are the investigators. They include daring archaeologists, vindictive police detectives, renegade scientists, and obsessive amateur sleuths. They can be brilliant, and fallible. And some of them seem to have their own secrets. Are they shining a light on the truth or purposely trying to cover it up?

The second thing you notice about these tales is the way they are told. An acclaimed novelist of murder mysteries, Preston has an unerring sense of suspense, of how to hold the reader in his grip. Yet in these reported pieces, he is also scrupulous and rigorous about the facts. Propelled by his own compulsive curiosity, he follows one murky trail after another, which lead him from police interrogation rooms to pits of dinosaur bones, from DNA laboratories to Egyptian tombs. He keeps on digging and digging even when he arouses the ire of authorities or faces peril. He hunts down suspected criminals, confronting them with the damning evidence he has gathered, though he always judiciously allows them to share their side. It is not a coincidence that at least three titles in this collection contain the word

mystery. Preston is a recoverer of what is unknown: answers, justice, fragments of history.

Occasionally, he must find his way through a fog of information and disinformation. When he began searching for evidence to identify a serial killer, he was convinced that he could find the truth. Yet eventually he confesses, "I am not so certain. Any crime novel, to be successful, must contain certain basic elements: there must be a motive; evidence; a trail of clues; and a process of discovery that leads, one way or another, to a conclusion. All novels, even Crime and Punishment, must come to an end. But life, I have learned, is not so tidy."

It is this untidiness—this moral complexity—that makes these stories so powerful. They shed light on the greatest riddle of all: the human condition. Preston says he has drawn on the unfathomable elements in these stories to conjure the plots of his novels. As he proves in this collection, truth really can be stranger than fiction.

ORIGIN STORIES

The Lost Tomb is a novelist's answer to the question of where ideas come from. The author's mother shared stories about buried treasure, such as the inscription on a rock at their grandparents' cottage and the Oak Island Treasure. The story began when three boys from Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia discovered a mysterious treasure on an uninhabited island. The author was fascinated by the mystery and decided to investigate it for a nonfiction book.

The hunt for treasure on Oak Island was more active than ever, with wealthy man David Tobias planning a huge excavation to solve the mystery. He proposed the idea to Smithsonian magazine, which published a piece about the treasure hunt. The article was the most popular magazine article in a decade.

Around the same time, the author wrote a nonfiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, edited by Lincoln Child. The book told the story of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. One night, the author and his friend Linc visited the museum and found the Hall of Late Dinosaurs, surrounded by giant skeletons of T. rex and Triceratops. They decided to write a thriller set in the museum, leading to the novel Relic, which was made into a movie by Paramount Pictures. The couple later wrote a second novel, Mount Dragon, and a sequel called Reliquary.

After Reliquary was published, Linc and the author discussed the Oak Island mystery and an article they had read in Smithsonian. They decided to write