Only Flesh and Bones (Em Hansen Mysteries) (Hardcover)

by Sarah Andrews (Author) "CALVING is a cruel season in Wyoming..." (more)
Key Phrases: two foxtrot, only flesh and bones, Fred Howard, Miriam Menken, Sergeant Ortega (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Oil geologist and reluctant crime solver Em Hansen is one of the most interesting characters in recent mystery fiction--a strong woman with believable weaknesses and none of the smugness or coyness that bog down heroines of other, better-selling series. At the start of her fourth book, Sarah Andrews has Em helping her distant mother deliver a calf on the family ranch in Wyoming and wondering about her career choices: "If I hadn't found my own way to the edge, life might have been quite different for me. I might have had what it took to stay on my parents' ranch, or found myself married up to a neighboring spread, instead of heading off into these other lives of mine...." Luckily for us, Em's other lives--chronicled so sharply in A Fall in Denver, Tensleep, and Mother Nature--all available in paperback--make for rewarding reading. The latest book begins with an offer from a patronizing ex-boss to help the unemployed Em find a job--if she will try to discover why his 16-year-old daughter, Cecilia, is having such a hard time getting over the suspicious death of her mother. Em has to dig deeply into Cecilia's repressed memory and the dead woman's heartbreaking journals before some glimpse of the truth is revealed--and her search is suspenseful, poignant, and surprisingly sensual. --Dick Adler

From Publishers Weekly
After a few more cases, geologist Em Hansen may be as tough as the best of her sleuthing peers, but her vulnerability offers singular pleasures to current readers. In her fourth appearance (Mother Nature, 1997), unemployed Em is asked by J.C. Menken, a millionaire oilman and her former boss, to look into his wife's death. Miriam Menken had taken their teen-aged daughter, Cecilia, to Wyoming for the summer and was murdered. It's not so much that J.C. wants to find the killer as that he wants to understand what happened. Cecilia witnessed the murder but can't remember a thing, and even her psychologist doesn't seem able to help her. Leaving the cocoon of her family ranch, also in Wyoming, Em finds herself plunged into the tangle of another family's life just as she's adjusting to the recent death of her own father. She uncovers boxes of Miriam's journals, kept since college, and discovers that she, too, was hiding from her own past and unhappiness. It may be that a former lover, the charismatic Chandler, couldn't stay in the past, or Miriam could have been done in by her Wyoming landlord. But the two nefarious characters hanging around J.C.'s office stir Em's suspicions while she's wondering why Miriam's college friends are suddenly becoming so secretive. Andrews handles these possibilities with a sure hand as she introduces an endless supply of secondary characters whose company is a delight. Thoughtful and uncertain, Em is especially appealing as she makes the quiet point that murder involves more than flesh and bones.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur; 1st edition (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312186428
• ISBN-13: 978-0312186425
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,064,805 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is Sarah Andrew's best yet in the Em Hansen series., May 12, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Stanford University, CA) - See all my reviews

ONLY FLESH AND BONES is the strongest book yet in the excellent series of Em Hansen mysteries written by Sarah Andrews. While it has some exciting action scenes, it is essentially a probe inside the minds of the well-developed characters, centering on Cecelia, the troubled daughter of a Denver oil tycoon who may have repressed memories that would lead to the unraveling of the mysterious death of her mother. Love, revenge, and international deals in the multi-millions combine to create a web of intrigue that Em, a petroleum geologist by training, but a private investigator by force of circumstance, must use all her analytical skills -- and sheer grit and gumption -- to unravel. While this book would provide a very gripping introduction to the Em Hansen series, I urge fellow readers who are unacquainted as yet with this scrappy, independent young woman to begin at the beginning, with TENSLEEP (1994) which introduces you to Em as a young woman mud-logger on a Wyoming oil rig, deep in a macho ambiente and getting into trouble investigating possible foul play. Then continue to A FALL IN DENVER (1996), where Em finds herself in a staff geologist job for a big oil company, and once again immersed in intrigue and foul play. And, finally, in MOTHER NATURE (1997), where Em, drawing on her geology and environmental skills, investigates the mysterious death of a powerful Senator's daughter through beautifully drawn Northern California scenes. All these volumes are informed by the fact that the author, Sarah Andrews, is herself a geologist, and clearly loves the natural beauty of the scenes she describes. I feel that this background will make ONLY FLESH AND BONES even more enjoyable, besides providing you with many hours' of great entertainment.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific, May 16, 1998

By A Customer

Josiah "JC" Menkin leaves Denver to visit his former employee, geologist Emily Hansen to plead with his former employee to help him with his teenage daughter, Cecilia. The teen has blocked out the trauma of witnessing the murder of her mother, Miriam. Em, an unemployed geologist and part time amateur sleuth reluctantly agrees to try to help Cecilia because she has always liked the teen.

Em convinces herself that in order for her to help Cecilia she needs to learn what really happened to Miriam. She begins to investigate the deceased's background and the murder. Em soon places her own life in jeopardy due to the investigation taking her to a sidebar involving cocaine smuggling. If Em is not careful, her curiosity could ultimately lead to her own death.

ONLY FLESH AND BONES is a refreshing amateur sleuth tale due to the introspective yet extroverted Em and Chandler (a refreshing charismatic criminal, who hopefully will reappear in a future Hansen novel). The novel contains a good who-done-it filled with lots of good humor (especially targeted is the psychiatry business). Sarah Andrews has developed an endearing protagonist, whose appearances are worth reading by fans of amateur sleuth mysteries.

Harriet Klausner Harriet Klausner

4.0 out of 5 stars Not quite as interesting as her other works, March 22, 2003

By	K. Delaney "linksalive" (Salt Lake City, Utah USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Only Flesh and Bones (Em Hansen Mysteries) (Mass Market Paperback)

The thing I found most intriguing about the Sarah Andrews series is the way the author hooks geologic themes within a mystery. For example, Tensleep centers around the drilling of an oil well, Faultline centers around seismology.

Flesh and Bones is a wonderful story, and has some of Sarah Andrew's best character development. My only disappointment was the lack of the geologic theme.

Flesh and Bones begins with a voyeuristic look into the life of a Mariam Menkin. Mariam was a baby boomer who betrayed both her sex and the sixties to marry a "nice guy." In this work, we find scattered pieces of Mariam's diary and gradually glue together the pieces of how and why she was murdered.

The book brings us on a tour of Wyoming and Colorado as Em Hansen digs up clues in Douglas, Denver and Saratoga Springs. We meet good and bad cattle ranchers and some suspicious activities at oil companies.

If you are reading the Em Hansen series for the geological themes; you can skip this one. Even in the overall development of the Em Hansen character, Only Flesh and Bones plays a less important role than the other works. If you have limited time for reading, I would read all the other novels first.