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Unnatural Selection (Gideon Oliver Mysteries)
by Aaron Elkins
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Berkley Hardcover (2006-06-06)
ISBN: 0425210057
EAN: 9780425210055
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 288 pages
SKU: M6-4N7G-0CL5
Condition: Very Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The Edgar® Award-winning author of Where There's a Will returns with another bonechilling mystery starring "Skeleton Detective" Gideon Oliver.
Sue Grafton called Aaron Elkins "first rate." Elizabeth Peters called him "one of the best in the business and getting better all the time." And now he's back in top form.
Forensics professor Gideon Oliver accompanies his wife to the Isles of Scilly, which dot the sea like an emerald necklace thirty miles off the Cornwall coast. Julie's been invited here by Russian expatriate Vasily Kozlov, scientist, millionaire, and eccentric. At his home, Star Castle, he regularly hosts a consortium of guests with differing opinions-which makes for some very heated arguments.
While Julie's stuck indoors, Gideon looks forward to puttering around the Neolithic sites nearby. But before day one is through, a newer bone turns up-this tibia is only a few years old-and all signs point to murder. And just as Gideon and the local law puzzle over the bone's origin, another murder happens at Star Castle. Could it just be bad luck, two murders within a couple of years? Or do Kozlov's lively debates have a way of turning deadly?
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Customer Reviews
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Unnatural Selection my first Gideon oliver mystery
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-10-22
I happend to just pick this book off a rack of used books, to while away a few hours. I quickly got into this book and as much as it is a murder mystery it is a course in skeletal anatomy and a travelog of Isles of Scilly. It was a good story wrapped in understandable science, people you cared about in an interesting setting. I want o go to the begining of the Gideon Oliver mysteries and work my way through them all. It is what I like about reading, to find that one book that draws you in and you cannot wait to read everything the author has written, only to find that there is a whole series fo book waiting to be discovered!. Great book. Read it.
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Unsatisfying Jumble
Rating  (2)
Date: 2009-06-11
This was the first Gideon Oliver mystery I've read, so maybe the series needs to grow on me. The entire premise of the conference, in which his wife, a Federal employee of the US Department of Interior, was a participant, was much too implausible. A Federal employee in her position could not participate in a conference, and it's very hard for Federal employees to travel overseas for work (I too am a Federal employee, but for a different cabinet-level agency). The writing style was a bit simplistic for my taste, though the word pictures of the Scilly Islands were quite vivid. The dog trainer was a trainer or hoarder- hard to tell from the description of so many dogs in his house. Nor would dogs he was boarding (from where did they come? those islands are not densely inhabited) listen to him on a dime, as Elkins described it. The denouement was pretty unsatisfying. I'm willing to give Elkins' books another try. Hopefully, others are better.
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Packed between the covers
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-08-17
What is better then a great mystery, intelligent characters and without even trying you get to learn something on top of it?
Gideon Oliver and his wife are a rarity, no demons or craziness, a nice normal couple who love and support each other. Which is the reason why Gideon accompanied his wife, Julia to England. And unlike some other fictional forensic anthropologists, Gideon is able to interact with other people in polite society.
Gideon was not looking for adventure when he comes across another murder when asked to examine some bones in a local museum. Dealing with the local police, his wife's competitors in a research grant, his host's peculiar behavior and the setting itself is worth the read. Dinner in a dungeon? Fantastic.
The minor characters are interesting, quirky but never cartoonish.
And to top it off you learn the difference between a cadaver and bomb sniffing dog and how they`re trained. Believe me it was interesting, not at all boring and it is important to the story. You also get to learn a bit about forensics, all very fascinating.
What I always appreciated about Mr. Elkins stories is that his books are all around 200 pages. But in those 200 pages, you will find very interesting characters, great settings, and a great story.
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Yet Another Conference
Rating  (3)
Date: 2008-03-17
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
While this book will be welcomed by Gideon Oliver fans with the same warmth as previous books, the similarities to previous books mount up until it almost feels as if one has read this one before. How many conferences in how many exotic isolated locations have Gideon and Julie attended? And someone winds up murdered and Gideon astounds the local police with his ability to identify the occupation of a stiff/cause of death from a fragment of bone. It's the same trick every time and the reader learns a little something about the bones.
And Gideon is the same guy we liked, thirteen books ago. It's okay for a formula fiction character to never change and this is okay for formula fiction. I read it and it was an okay read, but I'm not excited by the idea of the next book as I was when I first discovered this series when it was only four or five books old.
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Unnaturally good
Rating (5)
Date: 2008-01-09
It is not entirely clear to me why this 13th volume in the Gideon Oliver books bears the title it does, but this is one of the best of Elkins' stories. It is a classic "Skeleton Detective" mystery (do I need to explain that Oliver is a forensic scientist, not some fanatastical animated skeleton?). You don't need to have read any of the earlier books to enjoy this one. The story has clues galore if you know your skeletal anatomy, an involving plot in the purlieus of British police work, and fewer indulgent sightseeing digressions than in recent books. For some reason I find his stories set in Europe to be the better ones. As usual there is a very well hidden clue in the very first chapter, but of course you cannot recognize it until well into the story, by which time you will have forgotten that key little detail. (To be truthful, Oliver had forgotten it, too.)
Typically, Dr. Oliver is on vacation, with his ranger wife Julie, this time at an environmental conference in the Scilly Islands off England. (Oh, there are jokes about the Isles of "Scilly," is the "c" not pronounced?) The suspects, uh, guests, have an interesting diversty of character and opinion--and aren't the women something! As a favor, Oliver checks out a Cromwellian skeleton for a local museum, but is soon so distracted by a sawed off ankle joint found elsewhere that we never learn the context of that Roundhead. Oh, well, that historical mystery is soon supplanted by investigation of this other, disarticulated, and newly deceased person, at the behest of a crusty old copper who has been quasi-cashiered into a do-nothing post. The satisfying plot device is to take us step by step through Oliver's gradual uncovering and reconstructing of a body beginning with that single joint. Very Sherlockian, without the icy arrogance. He performs an "osteo-biography" of the murdered person, arriving at a surprising identification, but that stimulates further crime. One flaw is, how could the coppers interview Julie, but not Oliver, although both were on the "closed" scene of the new crime?
I enjoyed this story, which has lots of forensic detection presented with an expert, and light, touch. There is very little academic preaching to convey the technical details. If you see pictures as you read, then some scenes will be pretty gory; not all Gideon's dead are just bones.... Some readers may be offended by Elkins' skeptical treatment of a type of people-hating environmentalist. What I'd really like to know is how Gideon ever identified (according to an anecdote he relates) a water-rotten corpse as a baseball-playing motorcyclist? Surely Elkins is teasing us (unless he is referencing one of his earliest stories whose victim I've forgotten--not at all Elkins' usual practice). I think I shall read my collection again.
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