Customer Reviews

Unnatural Selection (A Gideon Oliver Mystery)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aaron Elkins is the heir apparent to Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. His Gideon Oliver books are always a pure delight to read. _Unnatural Selection_ is no exception. There's great detection, fascinating scientific information, very engaging protagonists, a neat location, witty writing, more great detection, and a satisfying denouement.

_Unnatural Selection_ does have one significant weakness. But it also has one outstanding strength.

Weakness: Gideon doesn't spend enough time with the suspects. He spends most of the book interacting with the local police. There's nothing wrong with that--the police sergeant is a nice piece of characterization--but it means we barely get to see the other dramatis personae. The function of suspects is to be suspicious, and we don't really learn enough about these characters to suspect anyone in particular.

(One could also argue that there's perhaps one suspect too many. On the other hand, Elkins is very good at handling large ensemble casts. I could always remember which character was which, for instance. So, on balance, I don't think this is a real problem.)

Strength: Elkins often opens his books with a prologue, which sets the scene and establishes some backstory. In _Unnatural Selection_, the connection between the prologue and the main story seems, for much of the book, to be unusually tenuous. I was actually wondering whether Elkins was going to let me down by failing to tie it all together.

Well, no worries. It turns out that the prologue contains a crucial clue, planted fair and square right in front of my eyes, the significance of which only becomes clear in the last chapter. Bravo!

So _Unnatural Selection_ isn't quite flawless. I wouldn't have complained if it had been, say, 10% longer. It is, however, the best mystery I've read this year. I'll be surprised if I find a better--at least until Elkins's next.

(For those new to this series, it is not strictly speaking necessary to have read any of the previous mysteries. But doing so is highly encouraged. And most of them are quite good. I will assume in this review that the reader is familar with the previous novels.)

It's nice to see Gideon back to doing what he does best, even if it is slightly formulaic. The recent books in this series have been missing something: bones. But this one doesn't disappoint.

Gideon needs something to do while his wife is attending a conference, so he agrees to help a small museum classify some of their collection of bones. This being a murder mystery, he quickly identifies one of them as coming from a murder victim. This leads to an investigation and a second murder. All in a day's work for The Skeleton Detective.

Julie is also around, though she plays a lesser role in the story. She's mainly an excuse for Gideon to be where he is (the Scilly Islands). John does not make an appearance, but a character from Murder In The Queen's Armes does reappear.

The supporting cast is nice and quirky, from the Jekyl-and-Hyde local cop to the cast of characters at the off-beat conference Julie is attending and on to the local "cadaver dog" trainer. And this time (unlike the last few books in the series), Gideon's bone work is directly important to the story. He also solves the crime himself (although he does it in parallel with the local detective, using a different route).

Gideon is back as the central character of the story rather than just a narrator/observer, and the change is welcome.

Gideon Oliver is a forensic anthropologist, a person who studies human bones to help the police determine who the deceased was and/or how he died. This is what distinguishes Oliver from other detectives in fiction. By now, Elkins has consulted with quite a number of scientists to make sure that Gideon gets his facts straight, and there are lots of facts. Unnatural Selection has more forensics in it than any of the others in the series.

Other people on this page have described most of the plot, so I'll just say a little about it. The action starts with Gideon, on vacation, examining a partial bone that had been discovered in the sand on a beach. He realizes that the marks on one end show that it had been sawed through and concludes that the person was probably murdered. He notifies the local police, they dig up more bones, and Gideon starts to piece together the story of the murder.

This all takes place in the context of a conference attended by several rather unusual people. Elkins likes to populate these novels with odd characters and he accomplishes that here by having a rich man convene a conference of people who are very interested in ecology but not very interested in scientific standards of evidence. Naturally, there are a lot of conflicts. Since we have to spend time with the suspects as Elkins establishes their personalities and their motives for murder, it's good of him to give us such interesting ones.

For me, a mystery writer should present enough evidence for the reader to guess who the murderer is, but should distract the reader so that he doesn't actually guess before the denouement. When Gideon and police sergeant Clapper confront the killer using evidence that had not been presented before, I felt that Elkins had "cheated". But I reread the book and I realized that there was enough information for us to guess. However, that would not be enough to justify an arrest in real life, so the, in order to make a satisfying ending to the story, Elkins provides additional info to the police. Interestingly, there is one clue that is so subtle that most readers will miss it. As we're reaching the end, Elkins puts in a suggestion to go back and reread that passage, but I was too eager to get to the end and I just kept reading.

As for the bones, this one is a solid winner for Gideon Oliver fans. Even before any crime is discovered, he describes to a regional museum director what the bones of a Cromwellian soldier tell about the soldier's life and death. As far as I can tell, this is a bonus, having nothing to do with the plot. Then he finds the sawn-off tibia and sets off the investigation. He uses some of the methods that appear in earlier books, but he also uses some new ones. For example, in the past he has used dentition and the ossification of long bones and the pubis to determine age; here he uses ossification of the cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum - similar idea, but expanding our knowledge. For those who are not already Oliver fans, I have to mention that Elkins uses technical terms and explains them. There are only a few per book, so anyone who is interested can learn them. He also shows Gideon in the act of thinking through the clues he finds. Unlike the TV crime shows I've seen, you get real forensics here.

In Unnatural Selection, the forensics sections are more extensive than in most of the others in the series, and also more integrated. In order to guess whodunit, or to appreciate the revelation when it comes, you have to read both the conversations with the suspects and the conversations with the police.

Real mystery, real scientific investigation, really interesting characters - it's a great combination.

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.

If you are a long-time fan of the Gideon Oliver series, you'll adore this book. If you haven't read any of the earlier books, you'll find Unnatural Selection to be a pleasant entry point to the series.

Gideon's forest ranger wife, Julie, is one of the stars at a conference hosted by an eccentric Russian, Vasily Kozlov, held in impressive Star Castle (a place you can visit for real in its incarnation as "St. Mary's premier restaurant-hotel"). Each of the stars has in common the lack of a Ph.D. which leaves Gideon sniffing suspiciously in the air. He hopes to avoid the conference as much as possible because he assumes that it will be mostly dreck, except for Julie's paper, of course.

Gideon receives an invitation to visit the local museum to look at odd bones that have washed up ashore. One of the bones disturbs Gideon . . . and he takes it over to the local constabulary. The head man there, Sergeant Clapper, isn't too impressed at first with Gideon's theories. But his junior Constable Robb wears Clapper down, and the investigation begins.

What follows is some remarkable research and writing about how you might discern the scene of a crime and the perpetrator after beginning with one bone. Anyone who enjoys the television shows about crime scene investigations will find this book to be quite rewarding.

There's also lots of humor at the expense of those who pretend to surround their opinions with the veneer of science while not having a proper approach in hand. The title itself indirectly refers to one of the "stars" who argues that hunting furthers natural selection. Gideon straightens him out -- it's unnatural selection because the more fit examples of the species are killed for their food and trophy value.

The book's main weakness is that determining the murderer is far too easy once the forensics have told their story. The solution is strongly hinted at even before that point.

I can highly recommend Aaron Elkins books. From the first book of his featuring "Gideon Oliver", I found both the storys and the author to be exceptionally good! I thought as a woman, these books would not be my cup of tea, but they're great. His recent book, Unnatural Selection is no exception. Don't hestiate to order this one! You'll want to read the whole series.

I don't care who else has a book out, this one is the next to read.

Aside from well defined characters, intriguing where's-he-going-with-that? tidbits of clues, and fascinating plot twists, Elkins' Gideon Oliver series always evoke an almost irresistable sense of place.

This time, your page-turning mini-vacation spot is the Scilly Isles, where you'll meet an odd assortment of humans, bones, and even a few highly trained professional dogs. As usual, all the clues you need are deftly hidden in plain sight.

Fans of the delightful Julie will be happy to know she's in a lot of this one. Fans of her now ritual astute insight - perfectly right, but utterly misleading to the reader -won't be disappointed.

My only complaint is that Elkins doesn't write faster!

Gideon Oliver's wife Julie is attending a consortium on conservation in the Scilly islands off the coast of England. Gideon accompanies his wife who is invited by Russian host, Vasily Kozlov. Every year Vasily invites guests with varying opinions on environmental issues.

Gideon doesn't have much interest in attending the conference but his experience as a forensic archaeologist is called upon when bones are discovered on a local beach. After some research and testing, Gideon determines the bones to be that of a guest who was murdered and dismembered two years previously. Gideon is asked by the local police chief to help with the investigation, but before there are answers to the many questions that arise in this case, another guest at the consortium is murdered.

I've read almost all, if not all, of the Gideon Oliver series. The last several have been lacking something. I could never really pinpoint what was off-- weaker plotlines, uninteresting stories, or just a series getting old, whatever it was, happily the newest Gideon Oliver book is reminiscent of the earlier ones. I was happily riveted to the story from the beginning. One minor flaw is that sometimes the story got bogged down in the very technical jargon of forensic anthropology. Learning is well and good, but when something is dry and tends to go on a bit too long, it stops the story in its tracks. Also the secondary cast of the guest at the hotel was not very well-developed. I had to flip backwards in the book to figure out who everyone was. They are introduced and then not really part of the story until the end. Regardless of a few flaws, I found the story very enjoyable.

I read Unnatural Selection in late July when I had a lot going on in my life and although I enjoyed it, I felt I had missed something. I read it again last weekend and found I had missed some of the plot twists because of my inattention and this time I could not put it down. The extreme egos of some of the characters and the setting itself combine to create the suspense that continues to build throughout the story. The interaction of the characters that causes increased tension in the group has some quirky bits that I thought were classic satire. (I have met people who remind me of the members of this group.)
This is the kind of story, like most of the earlier Gideon Oliver mysteries, that can be read again and again and I am sure that each time I read it I will discover some nuance that I missed earlier.

A Gideon Oliver mystery set in the UK and with a border collie... the only way this book could have gotten better was if it was wrapped in chocolate.

Terrific writing, with dialogue and description all working harmoniously. Gideon is so delightful with his self-deprecating humor and his encyclopedic knowledge of skeletal anatomy (Mr. Elkins -- these books should come with anatomy charts so we can all learn!)

Although the all-time best definitive mystery denouement in the second Oliver novel, "The Dark Place," still makes that my favorite in the series, this book definitely comes in a close second. Yum.