Rating: 
Summary: Witty bone puzzler
Review: When a modern skeleton turns up in a French Paleolithic cave, the local police call on visiting American archaeologist and "skeleton detective" Gideon Oliver to help identify the bones. Already probing at a sensitive wound (a fossil hoax perpetrated on - or by - the Insitut de Prehistoire in that very same cave) for a popular book he's writing on archaeological blunders, Oliver soon finds relations with his old academic Institut friends strained.Edgar winner Aaron Elkins delivers the sort of witty, well-paced bone puzzle readers of his Oliver series have come to expect. Poking gentle fun at mainstream publishing, the ferocious arguments of academia and French and American cultural differences, Elkins heaps up murder and mayhem while Oliver's wife Julie attempts to enjoy her vacation. The rural setting, in the midst of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon fossil-filled caves, and the smattering of science adds to the enjoyment of Oliver's spectacular Holmes-like bone reading and the friendly and productive relationship with his wife.
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