Old Bones: A Gideon Oliver Mystery - Softcover

In the flood tides off Mont St. Michel, revered Resistance-hero Guillaume du Rocher is drowned. Already assembled at the Rocher estate to deal with family business, members of the Rocher clan instead read his will. The next day a partial skeleton is found in the cellar and Gideon Oliver, a physical anthropologist, is called to examine the bones. They are those of a young man who died 50 years prior and Gideon believes the deceased was tied to the Resistance movement. When Gideon is threatened, and Claude, Rocher's principal heir, is poisoned, Gideon begins to unravel a web of espionage, family deceit and murder, whose dramatic resolution lies in the secret held by the old bones. This taut thriller won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery novel.

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.