Agent Pendergast

When we first meet Aloysius Xingu Leng Pendergast, he is a controversial FBI investigator in the novel, Relic, and in its sequel Reliquary, before assuming the protagonist role in The Cabinet of Curiosities. He is 50ish and slender, with pale blue eyes and a face “so finely modeled that it could have been carved by Michelangelo.” Independently wealthy, his salary at the FBI is an annual honorarium of $1. Pendergast studied Anthropology at Harvard University, graduating summa cum laude, and received a dual Doctor of Philosophy degree in Classics Philosophy from Baliol College, part of Oxford University in England. He hails from a wealthy New Orleans family, but lives in New York City, alternating between his tasteful apartment in the Dakota and a grand, Beaux Arts-style mansion uptown on Riverside Drive. A polyglot, Pendergast demonstrates a mastery of French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Portuguese and Cantonese, and appears semi-fluent in Mandarin and Japanese. He also boasts lethal expertise in many styles of combat, and practices “an esoteric mental discipline known as Chongg Ran,” which enables him to obtain “startling insights unobtainable any other way.”

Grateful acknowledgment is made to Nadine Waddell, whose devoted readership and knowledge of the Pendergast series was integral to updating and fact-checking the content for this website.