"a surgically-gifted madman"

This phrase, when applied to a book that I, in a feverish state, am about to read is like Pavlov's dog hearing a bell. Well, I didn't drool, but I did giggle in anticipation.

The Cabinet of Curiosities was picked up, read and laid lovingly to rest next to my pillow in one sleepless night. A delightful concoction of science, horror and unadulterated mystery provides for not only a whoddunit but a whatdunnit that will have your nose buried in the pages until the final revelations.

I'm going to grab something from the authors website to summarize the story lest I spoil:

In the 19th century, New Yorkers flocked to collections of strange and grotesque oddities called "cabinets of curiosities." Now, in lower Manhattan, a modern apartment tower is slated to rise on the site of one of the old cabinets. Yet when the excavators break into a basement, they uncover a charnel pit of horror: the remains of thirty-six people murdered and gruesomely dismembered over 130 years ago by an unknown serial killer.

In the aftermath, FBI Special Agent Pendergast and museum archaeologist Nora Kelly embark on an investigation that unearths the faint whisper of a mysterious doctor who once roamed the city, carrying out medical experiments on living human beings. But just as Nora and Pendergast begin to unravel the clues to the century-old killings, a fresh spree of murder and surgical mutilation erupts around them. . . and New York City is awash in terror.

Pendergrast is a the Shadow meets Sherlock Holmes sans the misogyny. I welcomed the lack of everyday man as I embraced a character that would have seemed overwritten in any other context. Awash in forensics but never a dry tome; rich in characters but never lost with them, THE CABINET OF CURIOSITES filled my brain to the rim and left it sated.

And I mean that in a good way.