Skull Duggery
2009 • 281 pages
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating3.5
No one solves crimes like Skeleton Detective Gideon Oliver. 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.
Series
9 primary booksGideon Oliver is a 9-book series with 9 primary works first released in 1982 with contributions by Aaron Elkins.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is an outtake from a blog post discussing Gideon Oliver 15-17 over at The Irresponsible Reader.
This one gets a bonus 1/2 star for the mentions by both Gideon and Julie that if he's around, a skeleton (at least a skull) will appear to keep him busy (and would probably deserve the bonus without those mentions). I also appreciated the “just another day in the office” aspect of the attempt on Gideon's life. At this point, he should really take out a bigger life insurance policy any time he leaves the country.
A week's vacation in a little, out of the way, Mexican village turns deadly for Gideon and Julie. I really enjoyed the setting and the backstory on this one, even more than the forensics.
This one was almost painfully easy to figure out the killer – although the actual motive was trickier than I thought, but after The Reveal, it totally made sense. Despite that, I thought this was one of the better ones in this series that almost never has a lesser entry.
