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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great (if not quite perfect) read, June 8, 2006
This review is from: Unnatural Selection (Gideon Oliver Mysteries) (Hardcover)
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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Gideon playing with bones once more, August 18, 2006
This review is from: Unnatural Selection (Gideon Oliver Mysteries) (Hardcover)
(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.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good Mystery, Great Forensics, May 7, 2007
This review is from: Unnatural Selection (Gideon Oliver Mysteries) (Hardcover)
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.
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