City of Endless Night

Agent Pendergast Cast of Characters

Lt. Vincent D’Agosta — NYPD (formerly Southampton PD). Possibly Pendergast’s most trusted friend and associate.

Constance Greene — Pendergast’s ward, who also has feelings for him.

Proctor — Pendergast’s butler and chauffeur with abilities far beyond both roles.

Wren — a book restorer at the New York Public Library.

Mime — an invalid of unknown affiliation. Skilled in obtaining obscure information via the computer and Internet.

Dr. Nora Kelly — New York Museum of Natural History curator.

William “Bill” Smithback, Jr. — New York Times (formerly New York Post) journalist.

Captain Laura Hayward — New York City Police Department, helps in many cases.

Dr. Margo Green — New York Museum of Natural History curator.

Dr. Viola Maskelene — an Egyptologist.

Eli Glinn — president of Effective Engineering Solutions, Inc. Expert profiler and the only person to whom Pendergast will talk about his childhood and his brother.

Corrie Swanson — from Medicine Creek, Kansas, assists Pendergast on a case in Still Life with Crows.

Maurice — Caretaker of the Pendergast family mansion, Penumbra, in Louisiana.

Kyoko Ishimura — Pendergast’s maid in the Dakota.

Officially, the Pendergast’s family wealth came from pharmaceuticals, and the family became sufficiently old and established in New Orleans to conduct themselves as aristocracy. However, there are hints that the fortune actually came from patent medicine, and that some of the family’s customers suffered permanent injury or even death from its effects. To Pendergast’s shame, a streak of insanity has afflicted his family for generations; many of the family have been convicted of horrible crimes, and ended their lives in asylums.

Diogenes Dagrepont Bernoulli Pendergast — Pendergast’s younger brother (born circa 1962). As intelligent as Aloysius, if not more so, but criminally insane. Although he was always a unique child, Diogenes was pushed over the edge during a traumatic event during their childhoods. Sherlock Holmes fans will undoubtedly recognize the homage to Conan Doyle’s ‘Diogenes Club’.

Cornelia Delamere Pendergast — Pendergast’s great aunt, who poisoned her husband, brother and children. Cornelia held residence at the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane until her death.

Antoine Leng Pendergast (a.k.a. Enoch Leng) — Pendergast’s great-grand uncle. Antoine travelled north to New York after being expelled from the Pendergast family. Taxonomist and chemist as well as a member of the New York Lyceum in the late 19th century. Pendergast now lives in Leng’s old mansion on Riverside Drive, with Proctor as butler/chauffeur.

Hezekiah Pendergast — (Pendergast’s great-great grandfather) Antoine’s father. Was a traveling salesman who contributed greatly to the family fortune by selling a quack medicine known as Hezekiah’s Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. The tonic was eventually exposed as a lethal blend of cocaine, acetanilid and alkaloid botanicals. It was the cause of uncounted addictions and deaths, including that of Hezekiah’s wife and Antoine’s mother, Constance Leng Pendergast.

Henri Pendregast de Mousqueton — a seventeenth-century mountebank who pulled teeth, performed magic and comedy, and practiced quack medicine.

Eduard Pendregast — a well-known Harley Street doctor in eighteenth-century London.

Comstock Pendergast — Pendergast’s great-grand uncle. Famed mesmerist, magician, and mentor to Harry Houdini. Eventually murdered his business partner and his family. He then committed suicide by cutting his throat twice.

Linnaeus Pendergast — Pendergast’s father, who was killed in a fire.

Isabella Pendergast — Pendergast’s mother, also killed in a fire.

Boethius Pendergast — Pendergast’s great-grandfather. Lived at the Penumbra, was good friend to famed naturalist painter, John James Audubon.

Helen Pendergast — Pendergast’s thought-to-be deceased wife (maiden name Helen Esterhazy). Helen was a doctor with Doctors With Wings, a group similar to Doctors Without Borders, that travels to third-world countries and disaster areas to help people who would have otherwise had little chance of survival. She was also a skilled big game hunter, and it was one of the pastimes that brought her and Pendergast together. Thought to have been killed in an African safari.

Judson Esterhazy — Pendergast’s brother-in-law. Like his sister Helen, he was a doctor with Doctors With Wings and is a skilled hunter.

Percy Harrison Fawcett — Pendergast’s great-great uncle on his mother’s side. He was an explorer and disappeared in the jungles along the Upper Xingu River (hence Pendergast’s middle name) in 1925 while looking for the mysterious Lost City of Z.

Tristram — Pendergast’s child with Helen.

Alban — A genetically engineered, identical twin to Tristram. Unknown if deceased or alive.