An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to
rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a
documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment
and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But when Gideon
discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones-and violence
claims a famous Egyptologist's life-he is thrust into a spotlight of a
different kind. Plying his calipers as the world's foremost forensic
anthropologist, Gideon's investigation of the goings-on leads him
through the back alleys and bazaars of Cairo and deep into the
millennia-old tombs of the Valley of the Kings. As the puzzle is
painstakingly pieced together, Gideon will find that the identifying
traits of a cunning killer are the same now as they were in the time of
the pyramids: greed without guilt, lies without conscience . . . and
murder without remorse. 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.
