Mysterious Reviews, mysteries reviewed by the Hidden Staircase Mystery Books, is publishing a new review of Skull Duggery by Aaron Elkins. For our blog readers, we are printing it first here in advance of its publication on our website.
Skull Duggery by Aaron Elkins
A Gideon Oliver Mystery
Berkley Prime Crime (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 0-425-22797-9 (0425227979)
ISBN-13: 978-0-425-22797-8 (9780425227978)
Publication Date: September 2009
List Price: $24.95
Review: Gideon Oliver heads to Mexico with his wife Julie for a week at a luxury dude ranch in Skull Duggery, the 16th mystery in this series featuring the "Skeleton Detective" by Aaron Elkins.
Julie's cousin Annie has to return to the US, and asks Julie to manage the Hacienda Encantada for a week in her absence. Julie is thrilled by the opportunity to get away from Seattle for a bit. They're barely off the plane before Gideon is asked to consult on a body that the local authorities have just found. "I told him something like this would turn up," Julie says to Annie. "It never fails." The body is of a man who appears to have been shot, but there's no bullet and no exit wound. Gideon determines the cause of death, and that would appear to be the end of his involvement. But then another skeleton turns up in a local mine, this time apparently of a young woman. In a community that is virtually crime free, this is too much of a coincidence. Gideon wants to pursue an investigation, but the police chief warns him, "Even if you were to ferret something out, even if you were to identify her murderer, [due to Mexico's statute of limitations] nothing could be done about it, you understand?" But that's not Gideon's style.
Skull Duggery is at its strongest when Gideon is alone with his bones. Even after 16 books, there's a sense of wonder and awe as Gideon coaxes the most obscure information from the bones. "Like any forensic anthropologist, he took satisfaction and pleasure in working with skeletons, in reconstructing, at least in part, the living human being -- sex, age, habits, appearance, occupation, the whole history of a life, and often the nature of its death -- from a pile of bones." The exotic setting in Oaxaca, with centuries of history and culture, would seem to be a perfect place for Gideon to practice his craft. And the A-ha! moment, when it happens, is always a thrill.
But the rest of the story is completely forgettable, the characters, for the most part, indistinguishable and interchangeable. It seems more effort was put into describing Gideon's meals (for lunch "a bowl of creamy Oaxacan-style gazpacho, made with eggs and sour cream, and garnished with jicama and cumin-coated tortilla chips"; for breakfast "hibiscus juice, cubed melon and papaya, a tender, perfectly cooked vegetable frittata, and toast, jam, and coffee"; for dinner "tacos al pastor, marinated pork [shaved] from the sides of a trompo, a top-shaped vertical spit, [laid] over two stacked, warm, freshly made corn tortillas, and neatly [topped] with a slice of grilled pineapple") than in creating a credible, interesting plot. Though Gideon is entertaining as per usual, Skull Duggery is not one of his better adventures.
Special thanks to Penguin Group for providing a copy of Skull Duggery for this review.
Review Copyright © 2009 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
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Synopsis (from the publisher): Gideon and his wife are on vacation in Mexico when a local police chief requests his assistance on a case. A mummified corpse was discovered in the desert and the coroner believed the victim was shot. But Gideon's examination reveals the victim was stabbed with a Phillips-head screwdriver. Then Gideon is asked to examine the skeleton of a murder victim found a year earlier -- only to discover another error. The coroner misidentified the remains as belonging to a twelve to fifteen-year-old girl, when in fact the remains were that of a young woman of twenty.
Gideon knows these two "mistakenly" identified bodies aren't a coincidence. But finding the connection between them will prove more dangerous than he could possibly imagine -- and place him into the crosshairs of the killer he's hunting.
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