Mayan ruins in the Yucatan . . . a secret room in a tomb . . . age-old skeletons. To anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the renowned Skeleton Detective, the invitation to join the archaeological excavation of Tlaloc promises two months of paradise on Earth.

That is, until an ancient series of Mayan curses against desecrators of the site is unearthed. When the first one comes to pass ("The bloodsucking kinkajou will come freely among them"), it is taken by all as a practical joke. But by the time the fourth one is apparently consummated ("The one called Xecotcavach will pierce their...

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...

An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first conundrum to rattle Gideon Oliver when he arrives in Egypt. There to appear in a documentary film, he expects an undemanding week of movie star treatment and a luxurious cruise up the Nile with his wife, Julie. But when Gideon discovers a tantalizing secret in the discarded bones--and violence claims a famous Egyptologist's life--he is thrust into a spotlight of a different kind. Plying his calipers as the world's foremost forensic anthropologist, Gideon's investigation of the goings-on leads him through the back alleys and bazaars of...

An American museum curator in Berlin must find a fake painting--and a real killer--in this mystery from the Edgar Award-winning author of Switcheroo.

Chris Norgren, museum curator and Renaissance art expert, heads to Berlin to assist in mounting a sensational exhibit: The Plundered Past--twenty priceless Old Masters looted by the Nazis, thought for decades to be lost forever, and only recently rediscovered.

But things quickly get out of hand when Chris's patrician, fastidious boss, after sensing a forgery in the lot, turns up dead the very next day--on...

When anthropology professor Gideon Oliver is offered a teaching fellowship at US military bases in Germany, Sicily, Spain, and Holland, he wastes no time accepting. Stimulating courses to teach, a decent stipend, all expenses paid, plenty of interesting European travel . . . What's not to like?

It does not take him long to find out. On his first night, he is forced to fend off two desperate, black-clad men who have invaded his Heidelberg hotel room with intent to kill. And then there are a few trivial details that the recruiting agency forgot to mention--such as the fact that the...

A museum curator travels to Italy and looks into a murder in this "fresh, funny and] thoroughly enjoyable mystery" by the author of the Gideon Oliver series (Publishers Weekly).

Mild-mannered and law-abiding, Chris Norgren, curator of Renaissance and Baroque art at the Seattle Art Museum, is an unlikely undercover investigator, but when a priceless Rubens portrait is discovered in a shipment of "authentic reproductions" in a local warehouse, Chris is pressed into service to find out how it got there. The quest leads him to the medieval city of Bologna, one of his...

Gideon Oliver expects to be amicably bored when he takes on the role of "accompanying spouse" at a lodge in the magnificent wild country of Glacier Bay, Alaska, where his forest ranger wife, Julie, is attending a conference. But it turns out to be exactly his cup of tea. There is another group at the lodge: six scientists on a memorial journey to the site of a thirty-year-old glacial avalanche that killed three of their colleagues. Their leader is TV's most popular science personality, the unctuous M. Audley Tremaine, who is the sole survivor of the fatal avalanche. But he does not survive...

In April 1945, the Nazis, reeling and near defeat, frantically work to hide the huge store of art treasures that Hitler has looted from Europe. Truck convoys loaded with the cultural wealth of the Western world pour in an unending stream into the compound of the vast Altaussee salt mine high in the Austrian Alps. But with the Allies closing in, the vaunted efficiency of the Nazis has broken down. At Altaussee, all is tumult and confusion. In the commotion, a single truck, its driver, and its priceless load of masterpieces vanish into a mountain snowstorm.

Half a century later, in a...

There is not much left of the irascible Albert Evan Jasper, "dean of American forensic anthropologists," after his demise in a fiery car crash. But in accord with his wishes, his remains--a few charred bits of bone--are installed in an Oregon museum to create a fascinating if macabre exhibit. All agree that it is a fitting end for a great forensic scientist--until what is left of him disappears in the midst of the biannual meeting (a.k.a., the "bone bash and weenie roast") of the august WAFA--the Western Association of Forensic Anthropologists--in nearby Bend, Oregon.

Like his...

Anthropology professor Gideon Oliver would prefer to keep his mind on his beautiful new bride Julie during their English honeymoon, but one intrusive question will not stop nagging at him: Who would want to steal a thirty-thousand-year-old parieto-occipital calvarial fragment?

Yet someone has lifted this chunk of prehistoric human skull from a musty museum in Dorchester. Then, thirty miles away, an archaeology student is murdered, increasing tension and suspicion at a dig that had already seethed with suspicion, rivalry, and mistrust. Could there be a connection between a hot bone...