Skeleton Dance

"Les Eyzies-de-Tayac is known for three things: pate de foie gras, truffles, and ancient bones. This small French village is home to the largest concentration of prehistoric fossils in Europe and headquarters of the prestigious Institut de Prehistoire, which studies them. So when the local police inspector, Lucien Anatole Joly, finds reason to suspect foul play, he places a call to his old friend Gideon Oliver, the famed 'Skeleton Detective,' ...

"Once Gideon arrives, murder piles on murder, puzzle on puzzle, and electrifying surprise on surprise, in a series of unexpected events that threaten to tear the once sober, dignified institute apart. It takes a bizarre and startling forensic breakthrough by Gideon to bring an end to a trail of show more deception almost forty thousand years in the making."
~~front flap

This is a wonderful mystery, set in the Dordogne, a regular mecca for archaeologists and anthropologists -- full of cave paintings and Middle Pleistocene habitation sites in rock shelters. It's reported to be a beautiful area, and of course the many caves with prehistoric rock art (Roc-aux-Sorciers, Lascaux, La Chaire à Calvin, Abri du Poisson, Cap Blanc, Rouffignac [Cave of the Hundred Mammoths], Font de Gaume, Pech Merle, etc.) and the numerous archaeological sites are a once in a lifetime experience. (Of course you can tell that I would give anything to be able to go there ...)

Gideon becomes embroiled in a more modern mystery, analyzing the bones of a recent murder by request of Inspector Joly. The plot continues to twist and thicken, of course, and the murderer is finally identified, and it's a lovely tour through the region's cafes and hotels and landscape for Gideon and Julie in the meanwhile. Well worth reading if you're a mystery fan. show less

This book is just OK. Too many people telling lies (or not telling what they know - lying by omission). Though figuring out who the skeleton was (just) before Gideon does (and using different criteria) was fun - figured out, not remembered, I think, though I've read it several times before.

Less forensic detail than I’m used to but it was still interesting. The bones were really badly beaten up but somehow Gideon was able to get some useful clues out of them. Not enough to make the things easy to solve though. It was one of the other scientists of course and the bones in the cave were Ely’s bones. He didn’t fly off in his plane and crash into the sea. That was a ruse.

"Many people - villagers, campers, tourists - explore these caves. People have died in them before. They slip and fall, they are crushed by loosened rocks, they die of natural causes--" Joly looked at him, only barely managing to keep from shaking his head at the man's never-ending obtuseness. "And do they bury themselves as well?" he asked.

Perfectly pleasant mystery with paleoanthropology overtones.

Gideon and Julie travel to France and help solve both a murder and a mystery ... the latter being a hoax designed to prove that Neanderthals were actually closer to humans than apes. Good read.

Elkins has done a great job as usual, this time set in France again.
Apparently I have the hardcover and the ebook.