Elkins, Aaron

Gideon Oliver, Skeleton Detective books

Note:  I recently found that I had overlooked several of Aaron Elkins' books, so this page will be updated as I finish reading them.  In addition to the Gideon Oliver books, I found two of his Chris Norgren books and one of the Lee Ofstead books he wrote with his wife Charlotte, so I'll be updating that page, too.

Anthropologist Gideon Oliver, still grieving the death of his wife Nora, has taken an overseas post teaching at American military bases in Europe in Fellowship of Fear.  When he arrives in Germany, he learns that the two previous occupants of the fellowship have either died or mysteriously disappeared.  Gideon soon finds himself caught up in international espionage.  I wasn't too thrilled with the spy stuff, but loved the descriptions of places I had been in Germany, especially Heidelberg.  Grade:  B.  

The Dark Place finds Gideon Oliver in the Olympic Rain Forest, the only rain forest in the northern hemisphere, to examine the skeletal remains believed to be hikers who had disappeared in the forest several years earlier.  The puzzling thing is that one of the bodies appears to have been killed by something wielding a bone spear point with superhuman strength, so of course when word of this gets out, the Sasquatch enthusiasts invade the forest in great numbers.  Grade:  A.

Honeymooning in England in Murder In The Queen's Armes, anthropologist Gideon Oliver, known as the Skeleton Detective, visits a small museum in Dorset, only to discover that the 30 thousand year old skull fragment of Poundbury Man, known among anthropologists as "Pummy", has been stolen from the museum.  When Pummy turns up again on the site of a dig being conducted a few miles away by a friend of Gideon's, murder ensues.  I like the fact that Elkins uses knowledge from his own career as a physical anthropologist in his mysteries, but manages to keep it reasonably accessible for the reader.  Grade:  B.  

Gideon Oliver thought accompanying his wife Julie to Alaska for a training class for park rangers at a remote lodge would be a nice vacation, but finds himself bored out of his mind, at least until human bones are released from the Icy Clutches of a nearby glacier.  When Gideon is asked to determine whether the bones are those of a team of botanists killed in an avalanche thirty years before, he finds that they are, but that at least one of the team was murdered.  Complicating this is the presence of the sole survivor of the avalanche, prominent television scientist M. Audley Tremaine, two other scientists who were on the expedition, and a group of the relatives of the three people killed in the avalanche.  When Tremaine is killed and the manuscript of his "tell all" book stolen, it appears that the killer is among those present at the lodge. Grade:  B.  

Make No Bones finds Gideon, Julie and FBI agent John Lau traveling to Bend, Oregon, for the Albert Evan Jasper Bone Bash, Weenie Roast and Chug-a-lug contest, AKA the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists semi-annual conference.  Highlight of the conference is to be the installation of the few skeletal remains of Jasper himself, killed ten years before in a flaming bus crash.  One problem: the remains are promptly stolen from the display case, and the chief suspects are the founding members of the WAFA.  Grade:  A.

Gideon and his friend FBI agent John Lau travel to Tahiti to the plantation where members of John's extended family grow Paradise's Blue Devil, the world's most expensive coffee, at the invitation John's uncle to investigate the suspicious death of a family member in Twenty Blue Devils.  Except that when they get there, they're told they're not needed, nothing to investigate, nothing to see here, thank you.  Naturally, this does not sit well with either Gideon or John.  Grade:  B.  

On vacation in Hawaii, Gideon is invited by John Lau to meet members of the Torkelson family, old friends of his who own one of the largest cattle ranches on the Big Island of Hawaii in Where There's A Will.  The gathering is interrupted by the news that an airplane, missing for ten years, has been discovered in a lagoon on a remote Pacific atoll, and is believe to contain the remains of Magnus Torkelson, missing since anonymous hit men killed his brother Torkel and burned down the ranch hay barn to conceal the crime.  At least that's the story the family is telling, until it isn't.  Grade:  B. 

 Gideon makes a joking comment to a reporter that his upcoming speech to promote his new book about archeological scams, hoaxes and frauds will reveal an even bigger fraud than that of Piltdown Man; the reporter takes the comment seriously and spreads the news worldwide so that all the attendees at a conference celebrating the discovery of Gibraltar Woman and Gibraltar Boy are expecting great revelations from him in Uneasy Relations.  Gideon himself tries to downplay it, until someone tries to push him off the Rock of Gibraltar.  Grade: B.