Old Bones (Gideon Oliver Series #4) by Aaron Elkins

Product Details

Synopsis

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 Old Bones. Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery of 1987.

Annotation

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 Old Bones. Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery of 1987.

Publishers Weekly

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)

Biography

Aaron Elkins is also the author of two stand-alone thrillers as well as three novels in a series written with his wife Charlotte, and three novels in another series that takes place in the art world.