But Pendergast upsets both the Sheriff and the editor with his opinion that the killer is local to Medicine Creek, for the simple reason that the town is so isolated that no one could have entered the area from outside without being seen.

Finding it inconvenient to conduct his investigations on foot, Pendergast hires a local teenager, Corrie Swanson, to chauffeur him around in her battered AMC Gremlin.

What is intriguing is that Medicine Creek's killer does not fall readily into either category: some of his attacks are unplanned and seemingly random, while his "organized" killings vary widely in their ritual aspects.

Corrie takes Pendergast to meet "Brushy Jim," a semi-deranged Vietnam veteran who is an avid collector of Old West memorabilia, and the town authority on "The Curse of the Forty-Fives."

Pleased to have an interested audience, Jim tells the story: the Forty-Fives were a group of Confederate Army veterans who formed a guerilla band after the Civil War to hunt Native Americans in the Kansas territory and make it "safe" for the white settlers.

When a visiting scientist is found murdered, the Sheriff develops his own theory of the case: Medicine Creek and a neighboring town, both of which are dying economically, were competing for a contract from Kansas State University, to plant an experimental field of genetically-engineered corn for ethanol production.

They likewise stumble onto the vast cavern system and narrowly manage to save Corrie and critically wound the killer, though several of the Sheriff's deputies are killed.

The discovery of the caverns beneath Medicine Creek revitalizes the town's tourist industry, saving its economy without recourse to the somewhat controversial ethanol field contract.

To her amazement, Pendergast also tells her that he has endowed her with an educational trust fund to escape Medicine Creek and attend Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire.

That FBI Special Agent Pendergast, one of the most charismatic thriller heroes in memory, dominates this latest novel from Preston/Child is the good news; that he's working the least interesting case of his literary career (other outings include The Cabinet of Curiosities and Reliquary) is the bad.

An unusual serial killer is wreaking havoc in a small corn-growing town in Kansas; he leaves outlandish signatures, such as a mutilated body within a circle of crows on stakes and a ring of broken corn stalks.

As if to emphasize his ancestry, the authors give Pendergast a Watson here: one Corrie Swanson, a rebellious, pierced and tattooed teenage girl whom he hires as his driver and guide.

When Corrie is dragged off to the killer's hideaway in a massive cave system, however, cops and Pendergast unite in an extended underground cat-and-mouse chase that will entertain readers despite their likely disappointment at the absurd, even ludicrous, identity of the villain.