The Dark Place

Aaron Elkins

Apr 2014 · The Gideon Oliver Mysteries Book 2 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

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.

The Dark Place is the 2nd book in the Gideon Oliver Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.
 

Ratings and reviews

mystery, myths-legends, anthropologist, romance**** I still like this one even after a number of years. I'd forgotten the romance novel stuff, but I was more than happy to reread all of the anthro. It was nice hearing about University of Wisconsin and Gideon's friends in anthropology and the FBI. The mystery was solid with good writing and problem solving. Joel Richards did a nice job of narrating.

There were parts of this book that I dearly loved. The ethnography was great. The descriptions of the area made me want to go visit. I really like Gideon, though I find him a little too stuck on formal education credentialing at times, and I like the introduction of Julie. The pacing was good, the story moved right along. But there were also parts of this book that I found completely frustrating and made me want to strangle the characters at times. For one, I was pretty sure of the weapon from the opening pages. And the fact that the anthropologist in the story didn't think of it, but instead attributed the force to 'super human strength' had me wanting to pull my hair out (assuming I wasn't bald already). Or the fact that immediately after being brained by a stone ax and knocked unconscious, Julie and Gideon starting tracking the little old man who found Gideon, even though Gideon was kind of thinking that it wasn't the old guy who did it. Why not look around for the tracks of the person who DID whack you on the noggin? The whole sequence with the Big Foot hunters could have been completely left out as well. One of the things that stood out to me, struck me as rather funny at the time, was how in 1982 there were people driving around with firearms in a National Park. In 1983 congress pretty much outlawed all civilian firearms in National Parks, which lasted until 2009. The eBook was formatted well with only a couple of minor spelling errors noticed.

About the author

Aaron Elkins is a former anthropologist and professor who has been writing mysteries and thrillers since 1982. His major continuing series features forensic anthropologist‐detective Gideon Oliver, “the Skeleton Detective.” There are fifteen published titles to date in the series. The Gideon Oliver books have been (roughly) translated into a major ABC‐TV series and have been selections of the Book‐of‐the‐Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. His work has been published in a dozen languages.
 Mr. Elkins won the 1988 Edgar Award for best mystery of the year for Old Bones, the fourth book in the Gideon Oliver Series. He and his cowriter and wife, Charlotte, also won an Agatha Award, and he has also won a Nero Wolfe Award. Mr. Elkins lives on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula with Charlotte.