SKULL DUGGERY.

Elkins, Aaron.

ISBN 10: 0425227979 / ISBN 13: 9780425227978

Published by New York: Berkley, (2009) dj

About this Item

Hardcover first edition - First printing. Mystery set at a small village in Oaxaca in Mexico, featuring forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver. SIGNED on the title page. 281 pp. Fine in fine dust jacket. Seller Inventory # 67864

Bibliographic Details

Title: SKULL DUGGERY.

Publisher: New York: Berkley, (2009) dj

Binding: Hardcover

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

Gideon accompanies his wife, Julie, to the charming little Mexican village of Teotitlan del Valle in the state of Oaxaca, where Julie's expatriate relatives, the Gallaghers, operate a dude ranch resort. Up to his ears in forensic work at home, Gideon can use a break, and he looks forward to a week of leisure and touring. Teotitlan is an out-of-the-way weavers village, peaceful and virtually crime- and drug-free. What could go wrong?
Plenty.
Before their first day in Mexico is over, a request from the village police chief has Gideon examining a mummified corpse that was found in the nearby desert a few days earlier. He quickly determines that the local coroner's findings are wrong on almost every count; what had seemed to be the "ordinary" murder of a wandering drifter was actually anything but.
Then his old friend Javier Marmolejo, now a colonel with the Federal Preventive Police, asks for Gideon's help in the cold-case investigation of the killing of a child, dead some thirty years, whose skeletal remains had been discovered in an abandoned mine not far from Teotitlan. Once again, Gideon's expert analysis turns things topsy-turvy; nothing is as the police had believed. Then, a cursory look at the skull of a Zapotec princess, 1,000 years old, in a local museum of curiosities produces similarly perplexing results: The "she" is a "he," the age of the skull is closer to thirty years than to a thousand, and the cause of death is...murder.
To top it all off, before Gideon's vacation is over, an inexplicable attack in the deserted, windswept archaeological ruins of Yagul will bring him frighteningly close to becoming one more murder statistic himself.
Most upsetting, these seemingly disparate events all point in disturbing ways to the Gallaghers. What Gideon and Marmolejo ultimately discover is more surprising, more unexpected, and more bizarre than anything that the Skeleton Detective could have possibly imagined.

About the Author:

Aaron Elkins is the author of the Edgar Award-winning Gideon Oliver mysteries.