Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 1 - 6 - Aaron Elkins

Written by Aaron Elkins
Read by Joel Richards
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Fellowship of Fear
Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 1
Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
Release date: 01-10-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Another marvelous series, this time from the 1980’s

When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. Stimulating courses to teach, a decent stipend, all expenses paid, plenty of interesting European travel…What’s not to like?

It does not take him long to find out. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention - such as the fact that the two previous holders of the fellowship both met with mysterious ends.

From there, it is all downhill. Gideon finds himself the target in an unfamiliar game for which no one has bothered to give him the rules. What he does have is his own considerable intellect and his remarkable forensic skills. He will need them, for he is playing for some fairly high stakes: the security of Western Europe.

The Dark Place
Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 2
Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
Release date: 02-19-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Gideon Oliver earns his moniker “The Skeleton Detective” in this riveting entry to the Edgar Award–winning mystery series “that never disappoints” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Deep in the primeval rainforest of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, the skeletal remains of a murdered man are discovered. And a strange, unsettling tale begins to unfold, for forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver determines that the murder weapon was a primitive bone spear of a type not seen for the last ten thousand years. And whoever—or whatever—hurled it did so with seemingly superhuman force. Bigfoot “sightings” immediately crop up, but Gideon is not buying them.

But something is continuing to kill people, and Gideon, helped by forest ranger Julie Tendler and FBI special agent John Lau, plunges into the dark heart of an unexplored wilderness to uncover the bizarre, astonishing explanation.

Fans of authors Kathy Reichs and Tess Gerritsen and television shows like Bones will be fascinated by Aaron Elkins’s award-winning landmark forensic detective series.

Murder in the Queen’s Armes
Series: The Gideon Oliver Mysteries, Book 3
Length: 7 hrs and 31 mins
Release date: 03-19-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Anthropology Professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride, Julie, during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a 30,000-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment? Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, 30 miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust. Could there be a connection between a hot bone and a cold-blooded murder? Gideon is called on by the police to apply the unique skills for which the media have named him “the Skeleton Detective”, and he reluctantly agrees. Before he is done, his sleuthing will lead him to another murder and will - in the most literal and terrifying manner imaginable - sic the dogs on him, putting Gideon himself, and Julie as well, in mortal danger….

A reviewer writes…Blackmail, academic hugger-mugger and more murder surface and Gideon and his wife are in dire peril. The characters and local color are only moderately interesting and the ending is rather tame, but the book is saved by Gideon’s enthusiasm and Elkins’s depiction of his neat “skeletal detective work.”

Old Bones
Series: Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 4
Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
Release date: 04-02-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery Novel of 1987.

“With the roar of thunder and the speed of a galloping horse comes the tide to Mont St. Michel”, goes the old nursery song. So when the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family falls victim to the perilous tide, even the old man’s family accepts the verdict of accidental drowning.

But too quickly, this “accident” is followed by a bizarre discovery in the ancient du Rocher chateau: a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the old stone flooring. Professor Gideon Oliver, lecturing on forensic anthropology at nearby St. Malo, is asked to examine the bones. He quickly demonstrates why he is known as the “Skeleton Detective”, providing the police with forensic details that lead them to conclude that these are the remains of a Nazi officer believed to have been murdered in the area during the Occupation.

Or are they? Gideon himself has his doubts. Then, when another of the current du Rochers dies - this time via cyanide poisoning - his doubts solidify into a single certainty: Someone wants old secrets to stay buried…and is perfectly willing to eradicate the meddlesome American to make that happen.

Curses!
Series: The Gideon Oliver Mysteries, Book 5
Length: 7 hrs and 18 mins
Release date: 04-23-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

Mayan ruins in the Yucatán . . . a secret room in a tomb . . . ages old skeletons. To anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the renowned Skeleton Detective, the invitation to join the archaeological excavation of Tlaloc promises two months of paradise on Earth.

That is, until an ancient series of Mayan curses against desecrators of the site is unearthed. When the first one comes to pass (”The bloodsucking kinkajou will come freely among them”), it is taken by all as a practical joke. But by the time the fourth one is apparently consummated (”The one called Xecotcavach will pierce their skulls so that their brains spill onto the earth”), nerves have begun to fray and suspicions and discord are mounting.

The steamy jungles weigh down on the band of eccentric anthropologists as one by one the curses continue to materialize. It takes Gideon’s special talents for deduction—along with the enigmatic insights of Mexico’s one and only Mayan Indian inspector of the state judicial police—to resolve an ancient riddle and a modern, murderous mystery.

Elkins provides another delightful, semiserious romp through science and an exotic police culture.

Icy Clutches
Series: Gideon Oliver Mysteries Series, Book 6
Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
Release date: 05-14-19
Publisher: Tantor Audio

On a trip to Glacier Bay, Alaska, the Skeleton Detective pursues a cold-hearted killer who buries evidence in an avalanche.

Gideon Oliver expects to be amicably bored when he takes on the role of “accompanying spouse” at a lodge in the magnificent wild country of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where his forest ranger wife, Julie, is attending a conference. But it turns out to be exactly his cup of tea. There is another group at the lodge: six scientists on a memorial journey to the site of a 30-year-old glacial avalanche that killed three of their colleagues. Their leader is TV’s most popular science personality, the unctuous M. Audley Tremaine, who is the sole survivor of the fatal avalanche. But he does not survive long and is soon found hanged in his room. If that is not upsetting enough, shocked hikers discover human bones emerging from the foot of the glacier-are they the shattered remains of the three who died, finally seeing daylight after their two-mile, three-decade journey within the glacial flow?

When the FBI seeks expert help, everyone agrees how fortunate it is that Dr. Oliver, the famed Skeleton Detective, is on the scene. Everybody, that is, but the person who wants ancient history to stay that way - and who believes that murder is the surest way to keep the past buried.

From a review..Physical anthropologist Gideon Oliver, earlier seen in Edgar-winner Old Bones , resumes his forensic sleuthing in this well-intentioned but wordy yarn. Having joined his wife on a professional junket to Alaska, Oliver is Johnny-on-the-spot when the survivors of a 1960 expedition discover bones. …. The intrepid “skeleton detective” is nevertheless able to wrest the truth about the events on Tirku from its “icy clutches.” But the repetitive scientific analysis and an overwrought narrative dull the novel’s potential for suspense.