AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK SEPTEMBER 1, 2009 Before the sun set on the last of the Neanderthals 25,000 years ago, was he living in peace with his smarter, handsomer cousins Homo sapiens (modern humans)?  Or were the two deadly enemies?  Archaeologists had debated this question for decades.  Then, a spectacular find on the Rock of Gibraltar leaves everyone speechless.... Buried ceremonially in a remote cave the skeleton of a Homo sapiens woman lies clutching to her breast the skeleton of a part-Neanderthal infant.  Mother and child?  Proof that the two species related after all, and in a distinctly intimate way at that?   Like the rest of the anthropological world, Professor Oliver finds "Gibraltar Woman" and "Gibraltar Boy" fascinating--and jumps at the chance to attend an on-site conference celebrating the anniversary of the discovery. But not everyone's in a festive mood.  Death stalks the the original excavators like an ancient curse.  Despite the certainty of the Royal Gibraltar Police that they are no more than a remarkable string of accidents, Gideon's intuition, coupled with a few scientific deductions, tells him otherwise.  As he tries to piece things together, Gideon's in for some nasty surprises.  Someone has set his sights on the Skeleton Detective, who's about to encounter a few deadly "accidents" of his own.  And unlike Gibraltar Boy, he's only human.... "Absorbing....Gideon gets the job done without CSI gimmicks and glitz.... In addition, Elkins offers readers a pleasant tour of the Rock and its neighborhood."    Publishers Weekly                                        "A neatly turned puzzle with a didactic but painless use of the forensic expertise that's the Skeleton Detective's stock in trade."      Kirkus Reviews  BUY AT AMAZON.COM Or From a Member of THE INDEPENDENT MYSTERY BOOKSELLERS ASSOCIATION

AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 1, 2009--The latest adventure of Gideon Oliver

       

         

Anthropology professor Gideon Oliver accompanies his wife Julie to the charming little Mexican village of Teotitlán del Valle in the state of Oaxaca, where Julie's expatriate relatives, the Gallaghers, operate a dude ranch resort.  Up to his ears in forensic work at home, the celebrated "Skeleton Detective" can use a break and he looks forward to a week of leisure and touring.  Teotitlán is an out-of-the-way  weaver's village, peaceful and virtually crime- and drug-free, What could go wrong?

Plenty.

Before their first day in Mexico is over, a request from the village police chief has Gideon examining a mummified corpse found in the nearby desert a few days earlier.  He quickly determines that the local coroner's findings are wrong on almost every count; what had seemed to be the "ordinary" murder of a wandering drifter was actually anything but.  Complications and uncertainties proliferate.

 Then his old friend Javier Marmolejo, now a colonel in the Oaxaca State Police, asks for his help in the cold-case investigation of  the the killing of a child, dead some thirty years, whose skeletal remains had been discovered in an abandoned mine not far from Teotitlán.  Once again, Gideon's expert analysis  turns things topsy-turvy; nothing is as the police had believed.  Then, a cursory look at the skull of a "Zapotec princess, 1,000 years old" in a local museum of curiosities produces similarly perplexing results: the "she" is a "he," the age of the skull is closer to thirty years than to a thousand, and the cause of death is … murder.

 To top it all off, before Gideon's "vacation" is over, an inexplicable attack in the deserted, windswept archaelogical ruins of Yagul will bring him frighteningly close to becoming one more murder statistic himself.

 Most upsetting, these seemingly disparate events all point in disturbing ways to the Gallaghers.  Suspicions, allegations, and questions  abound.    The answers, teased out by Gideon and Marmolejo in the novel's final pages, tie everything together in ways that are more surprising, more unexpected, and more bizarre, than anything that the Skeleton Detective or anybody else could have imagined.

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To contact the author, send an e-mail to acelkins@olypen.com