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Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | PB MYSTERY ELK | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
This winner of the 1987 Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery of the Year is back in print. When an old skeleton is found beneath the floor of the du Rocher estate, American skeleton detective Dr. Gideon Oliver is called in to uncover the secrets behind the bones.
Author Notes
Former anthropologist Aaron Elkins has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982.
He won an Edgar award for Old Bones, as well as an Agatha (with his wife Charlotte), and a Nero Wolfe Award. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist-detective Gideon Oliver, "the skeleton detective".
Aaron speaks often at professional conferences, is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, has written for Smithsonian magazine, and is the author of several short stories. His work, which has been published in over a dozen languages, include: NASTY BREAKS (with his wife Charlotte Elkins), MAKE NO BONES, A DECEPTIVE CLARITY, SKELETON DANCE, THE DARK PLACE, and Little Tiny Teeth.
He and his wife Charlotte live in Washington.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
When revered Resistance-hero Guillaume du Rocher drowns in a rushing flood tide off Mont St. Michel, members of the familysummoned by Guillaume on undisclosed urgent businessare already assembled at the domaine du Rocher, where, instead, they hear his will. The next day in the basement, a partial skeleton is uncovered, and Gideon Oliver, American physical anthropologist known as the ``Skeleton Detective,'' is called from his lectures at an international forensics conference to examine the bones. Gideon confirms the remains, determines that they are those of a young man dead almost 50 years, suggesting a connection to local Resistance actions, including one in which Guillaume's brother Alain was executed after Claude Fougeray, a du Rocher cousin and now Guillaume's principal heir, collaborated with the enemy. While Gideon gleans more and more information from the skeleton, Claude is poisoned and Gideon himself is threatened. An intricate plotmore substantial than it promises initiallyis weighed down by a school of weak red herrings, by too much multisyllabic information about bone structure and by characters more caricatured than lifelike. Elkins (The Dark Place and Fellowship of Fear), is better on the muck and sand below the abbey where the action, especially a thrilling final scene, gallops along as fast and compelling as the tide itself. (December 14) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Taking a few potshots at scientific terminology along the way, this deftly plotted mystery features the coldly elegant French inspector Lucien Anatole Joly investigating the mysterious appearance of an aged corpse in the cellar of an old manor belonging to the decidedly odd du Rocher family. Joly is aided by his friends Gideon Oliver, an expert in the analysis of human skeletal remains, and John Lau, an FBI agent, who happen to be in the area attending an international conference on science and detection. The manor, in the best tradition of detective fiction, is filled with eccentric relatives, all at each other's throats. The group has gathered for a family council called by the patriarch, Guillaume, who drowned days before the meeting began. Joly tends to think there is no connection between the body in the cellar and the death of Guillaume until Oliver happens to start analyzing the bones with a surprising set of conclusions. A satisfying puzzler with good characters. SWM. [OCLC] 87-42705