Dead Men's Hearts - Hardcover

Elkins, Aaron J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0892964669 ISBN 13: 9780892964666

Publisher: Mysterious Pr, 1994

Synopsis

Earning a place right next to the books of Dick Francis and Tony Hillerman are the engrossing mysteries of award-winning author Aaron Elkins. As the Chicago Sun-Times says: "Murder, a singular detective, a winning supporting cast, humor - what more could we want from a mystery?" Yet Elkins's Gideon Oliver novels do give us more: They engage the reader in a foray into the fascinating field of forensic anthropology, and they always happen in the very best places on earth for murder! His latest work, Dead Men's Hearts, is set in an unbeatable location for old bones and new skullduggery: the ruins of ancient Egypt.
A promised role in a documentary film draws Gideon Oliver to Egypt's famed Valley of the Nile, where he expects an undemanding week of movie-star treatment plus a top-of-the-line cruise along the river with his wife, Julie.
But a skeleton unexpectedly turns up in the garbage of the Egyptological institute where the filming starts. The bones, Gideon determines, are those of an anonymous Fifth Dynasty scribe who has been uneventfully gathering dust in a storeroom for seventy years. These venerable relics are cleaned, sorted, analyzed, and placed back in storage with all due respect.
Sifting through bones is nothing new for the man known as the Skeleton Detective, but wandering skeletons are out of the ordinary. So when the same remains inexplicably wind up in another garbage heap a few days later - days during which a staff member has died under highly suspicious circumstances - Gideon hauls out his calipers for a second, longer look.
What he discovers will send him and Julie through the bazaars and back alleys of modern Egypt and deep into the ancient Valley of the Kings. And as the puzzle is pieced together, Gideon will find that the identifying traits of a cunning killer are timeless: greed without guilt, lies without conscience... and murder without remorse.

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: Mysterious Pr
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0892964669
• ISBN 13: 9780892964666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 227