DP: They're not really a trilogy, just three books featuring some of the same characters. They don't need to be read in any particular order. In any case, I’m currently writing a book called Möbius Crater, in which Wyman Ford reappears. It involves a small meteorite strike, two teenage girls who steal a lobster boat, radioactive gemstones, and Mars’s moon Deimos, among other things.

KR: How do you want a reader to feel at the end of Blasphemy?

DP: One reader told me it took her a few days to shake off the sick feeling of anger and horror caused by the ending. I liked that.

KR: What does the book have to say about the clash between science and religion?

DP: The message of the book, not to put too fine a point on it, is strongly anti-fundamentalist. People who believe God will torture and burn His children for the crime of not believing in Him are, in my opinion, capable of evil. Blasphemy is an extrapolation of some of the murderous ideas expressed in Revelation, a sort of anti-Left Behind novel. In it, fundamentalism comes in head-on conflict with scientists-- with violent results.

KR: Is big science dangerous? Are there some things it’s better for us not to know?

DP: Blind faith is dangerous. And yes, I would have to say that scientific discoveries in the wrong hands can be dangerous as well. Perhaps very dangerous. All in all, it is better to know that to be ignorant. I think…

KR: You write on science for The New Yorker and The Atlantic. That sounds like an ingenious way to get paid for doing research for your novels.

DP: It is an excellent method. And it assuages my ego. I think, hey, I write for The New Yorker, so I can’t be a complete hack.

KR: You were co-author of The Wheel of Darkness that came out last year. Now this year Blasphemy is out in January and you have another book with Lincoln Child in August? How do you manage to get everything done? I’ll bet you found some ancient secret in a remote Tibetan monastery while doing the research for The Wheel of Darkness.

DP: Now you’re really making me feel like a hack…. Actually, the August book with Lincoln has been postponed a year, so the output isn’t quite as egregious as it seems. I console myself that I’ll never match Isaac Asimov or Shakespeare in either quantity or quality.

KR: Your brother Richard is a bestselling writer who wrote The Hot Zone among other books. Was there something in the water where you grew up?

DP: You should have heard our discussions at the dinner table. We’d try to outdo each other telling vile and disgusting stories. Our mother often sent us packing. I was at a dinner party at his house the other day and we started doing the same thing. I don’t think those guests will be accepting another invitation from the brothers Preston.

KR: Is there a book that you wish you’d written? Why?

DP: I wish I’d gotten my itchy little fingers on the idea behind Jurassic Park and run with it. Damn it, I worked at the American Museum of Natural History and I heard paleontologists speculating about the possibility of someday extracting dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes in amber. If only I’d had the wit to see what a fabulous idea that was.

KR: As we go to press, I know there’s a writers’ strike going on, but I wonder if Hollywood has plans for any of your books.

DP: Riptide is being made into a movie. The Cabinet of Curiosities and Still Life with Crows are under option. And Chris McQuarrie, the screenwriter who won an Oscar for “The Usual Suspects,” has optioned my nonfiction book, The Monster of Florence, and is writing (or at least was writing) a script based on it for Jinks/Cohen, the producers of “American Beauty.” Not a bad combination, it seems to me. Now all we need is Anthony Hopkins to play the Monster and Brad Pitt to play me (the resemblance between us is quite remarkable…) However, I’m not offering Blasphemy to Hollywood. It’s a personal thing.… It wouldn't make a good movie anyway.

Keith Raffel wrote Dot Dead, "without question the most impressive mystery debut of the year" according to Bookreporter.com.  Former counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is currently finishing up Two Graves, a political thriller set – where else? – in Washington, D.C.