Old Bones: A Gideon Oliver Mystery - Hardcover

Elkins, Aaron J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892962623 ISBN 13: 9780892962624

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1987

Synopsis

When members of a prominent Breton family suddenly die, and the parts of a human skeleton are found dating back to 1940, authropologist Gideon Oliver is called in to investigate

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Reviews

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.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1987
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0892962623
• ISBN 13: 9780892962624
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 197