Icy Clutches - Hardcover

Elkins, Aaron J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002323133 ISBN 13: 9780002323130

Publisher: Collins Crime, 1991

Synopsis

"Gideon Oliver expects to be amicably bored when he takes on the role of “accompanying spouse” at a lodge in the magnificent wild country of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where his forest ranger wife Julie is attending a conference. But it turns out to be exactly his cup of tea. There is another group at the lodge: six scientists on a memorial journey to the site of a thirty-year-old glacial avalanche that killed three of their colleagues. Their leader is TV’s most popular science personality, the unctuous M. Audley Tremaine, who is the sole survivor of the fatal avalanche. But he doesn’t survive long, and is soon found hanged in his room. If that isn’t upsetting enough, shocked hikers discover human bones emerging from the foot of the glacier―are they the shattered remains of the three who died, finally seeing daylight after their two-mile. three-decade journey within the glacial flow? When the FBI seek expert help, everyone agrees how fortunate it is that Dr. Oliver, the famed Skeleton Detective, is on the scene. Everybody, that is, but the person who wants ancient history to stay that way―and who believes that murder is the surest way to keep the past buried."

About this title

About the Author

Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist-detective Gideon Oliver, “the Skeleton Detective.” There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC-TV series and have been selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.
 Mr. Elkins won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his cowriter and wife, Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award, and he has also won a Nero Wolfe Award. Mr. Elkins lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula with Charlotte.

From Publishers Weekly

Physical anthropologist Gideon Oliver, earlier seen in Edgar-winner Old Bones , resumes his forensic sleuthing in this well-intentioned but wordy yarn. Having joined his wife on a professional junket to Alaska, Oliver is Johnny-on-the-spot when the survivors of a 1960 expedition discover bones. The leader, botanist M. Audley Tremaine, returns nearly 30 years later to unveil his book about the ill-fated trek to Tirku Glacier to the one other survivor, Walter Judd, and the relatives of those lost in an avalanche. But the remains of a skull found on the glacier reveal to Oliver that an ice pick had pierced it before the avalanche struck. Though Tremaine ostensibly hangs himself after hearing this news, Oliver suspects the scientist has been murdered. When Tremaine's manuscript and then the skeletal fragments are stolen, Oliver and the FBI have only the memories of Judd and the relatives to work with. The intrepid "skeleton detective" is nevertheless able to wrest the truth about the events on Tirku from its "icy clutches." But the repetitive scientific analysis and an overwrought narrative dull the novel's potential for suspense.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Collins Crime
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0002323133
• ISBN 13: 9780002323130
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256