Dead Men's Hearts (The Gideon Oliver Mysteries) - Softcover

Elkins, Aaron

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1497642930 ISBN 13: 9781497642935

Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller, 2014

Synopsis

Edgar Award–winning author: “A cunning plot, a remarkably appealing hero, some uproariously funny dialogue . . . a winning combination.” —Booklist
 
An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But when Gideon discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones—and violence claims a famous Egyptologist’s life—he is thrust into a spotlight of a different kind. Plying his calipers as the world’s foremost forensic anthropologist, Gideon’s investigation of the goings-on leads him through the back alleys and bazaars of Cairo and deep into the millennia-old tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

As the puzzle is painstakingly pieced together, Gideon will find that the identifying traits of a cunning killer are the same now as they were in the time of the pyramids: greed without guilt, lies without conscience . . . and murder without remorse.

Dead Men’s Hearts is the 8th book in the Gideon Oliver Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

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:

Anthropology professor, bone expert and renowned "Skeleton Detective," Gideon Oliver makes his eighth appearance, following Make No Bones , in Edgar-winning Elkins's engaging, mainly cozy, series. Not even the idiosyncratic Gideon and his wealth of appealing bone lore can, however, redeem the narrative's uncharacteristically sluggish pace. At Horizon House, a research facility in Luxor, the remains of a previously catalogued, 4400-year-old skeleton are found, mysteriously out of place in a storeroom. Gideon, who is there adding color commentary to a documentary dealing with ancient treasure, takes a look at the bones, at the same time noting the feuding among unwieldy academic egos and sorely harassed support staff. The suspicious death of the much disliked Horizon House director, who had accompanied the filming crew on a Nile riverboat, intensifies the mystery, especially after more bones--too many--with the same catalogue number turn up. Gideon remains charming and eccentric, especially with a dusty bone in hand or his beloved wife Julie nearby, but the conclusion, lacking the kind of after-the-fact inevitability relished by mystery lovers, mildly disappoints. Mystery Guild alternate.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Open Road Media Mystery & Thriller
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1497642930
• ISBN 13: 9781497642935
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 234