About the book: 2014 / Collection: “The Confrontation”: Robert Lawrence Stein against Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child His hero, FBI agent A.S.L. Pendergast, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child were created almost by accident. Lincoln, an editor at St. Martin's Press, had just finished editing Dinosaurs in the Attic, Doug's first nonfiction book on the history of the American Museum of Natural History. After the work was completed, they decided to write a thriller set in a museum. Doug wrote the first chapters of the double murder investigation and sent them to Lincoln, wanting his opinion. Child read the manuscript and criticized only one point: it seemed to him that the two police officers who investigated the crime were actually similar to each other. Then he suggested making one of these characters (this is how Lieutenant Vincent D'Agosta appeared), and then added that as a second detective they needed a new hero: an unusual person who would look like a black sheep in New York. “Yeah,” sarcastically Doug responded, irritated by the criticism. “Are you saying we should make him an albino from New Orleans?” They were both silent for a few seconds, and then Lincoln said, “I think this might work.” And over the next fifteen minutes, like Athena born from the forehead of Zeus, a special agent was born Pendergast. And the rest, as they say, is history. Throughout the series of novels, Agent Pendergast faces unusual adversaries: cannibal serial killers, arsonists, a murderous surgeon, a mutant assassin, and even his own brother, a mad genius. But he has never encountered such an opponent as the ventriloquist doll Slappy. Slappy is one of the most terrible heroes of Robert Lawrence Stine. Bob is one of the best-selling writers in the world: 400 million copies of his books have been sold so far. He is the author of Goosebumps, a wonderful series of horror stories for children. Thanks to Bob's imagination, millions of children began to read. In his unforgettable stories, such as “The Night of the Dummy,” “The Bride of the Dummy,” and “Son of Slappy,” the author introduces readers to his hero, a ventriloquist doll cut from a coffin board and brought to life through a spell. A sarcastic brute and sadist, Slappy has a raspy voice and enormous physical strength, and, as usual, seeks to enslave the hapless child who brings him back to life. The character is so popular that real ventriloquist dolls are produced in his likeness, which are sold to this day. According to Bob, he was inspired to create Slappy by the film almanac filmed in 1945 called “Dead of Night”, in one of the episodes which tells about a creepy and bloodthirsty a dummy that once took over the mind of its owner. Bob saw this movie as a child and was scared half to death. Interestingly, as a child he himself had a similar toy - a “Jerry Mahoney” ventriloquist doll. Eventually, the future author became captivated by the plot of how a human-looking and seemingly harmless dummy could turn out to be such a villain. The idea of ​​pitting the elegant, suave FBI agent Pendergast against each other and the evil ventriloquist dummy seemed so ridiculous and incredible that Doug, Lincoln and Bob immediately became infected with it and decided to dare. They ended up writing a psychological thriller that pits a dummy and an FBI agent against each other, taking on guises that knowledgeable readers might find strange and outlandish. One thing's for sure: this story is not for children..