I'd been avoiding this one because of some reviews that said that Gideon was doing adventure-hero stuff instead of proper Skeleton Detective work in this book. Well, no. He does go on an Amazon River cruise, and get mixed up (painfully) with drug dealers - but it's not his doing nor does he do any leaping-about heroics. In fact he's quite passive for most of the book as the story unfolds around him - it's not until he finds various bones and allows his deductive facilities free rein that he really starts moving forward. John Lau and Philip Boyijan (sp?) take part and both discover aspects of the mystery. This is one of the ones where the victim really did deserve his death - which doesn't really narrow down the field, although the deaths don't happen until the last third of the book. A lot of variously unpleasant and desperate people, and a serious downer of an ending. Not one of my favorites, definitely, but quite readable. ( )

Yikes! I never thought I'd see the day when I'd find a Gideon Oliver book that failed to intrigue me somewhere within its pages. Unfortunately, that day arrived when I opened the book. It just wasn't interesting enough for me. Not enough of the "bone detecting" that I had gotten used to. It wasn't that bad. It just wasn't that good either. ( )

Excellent ( )