Skull Duggery
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
Series
11 primary booksGideon Oliver
Gideon Oliver is a 11-book series with 11 primary works first released in 1982 with contributions by Aaron Elkins and Robert Sheckley.
Reviews
Popular Reviews
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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.
