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WHERE THERE'S A WILL
by Aaron Elkins
Berkley Prime Crime, April 2005
288 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0425200264


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Gideon Oliver is endearing -- though if I were Mrs Oliver, I might want to gently whap my husband once in a while. These fuzzy-headed academics . . . but Julie knew full well what she was getting when she joined up with anthropologist and 'bone detective' Gideon.

Gideon's off to Hawaii with his friend, FBI agent John Lau -- the friendliest special agent I'm sure anyone's ever met. After attending a meting of forensic anthropologists at an army facility in Honolulu, Gideon visits a cattle ranch, where John used to work. And as tends to happen when Professor Oliver's around, there's a mystery.

It seems that at long last, the disappearance of a member of the wealthy and slightly weird Torkelsson family has been solved. Maybe. A plane and a body have been found way out to sea. Magnus disappeared decades ago and now, with the reappearance, a number of things hang in the balance; possibly questions of inheritance, but more to the point, what happened all those years ago? Why did Magnus leave? And what does the rest of the family know? The family members including Hedwig, who's all about karmas and auras and past life regressions, to the aging stubborn secretive Dagmar, all seem to have something to hide.

Of course it would seem obvious that the bodies found with the small plane in a far-off lagoon are the two people who disappeared that disastrous night so many years ago, but it sure is handy to have someone along who can tell right off if it's true.

And then there's that odd little hint dropped early on, which I actually did catch which puts a twist into the lore as it's been established. A arson fire at the ranch, a murder, the disappearance of a brother and it comes back to haunt the remaining family years later.

I don't know Hawaii, and the details are an awful lot of fun; Elkins is very good at giving the reader a true sense of the places he visits in his books. From flying to the tiny lagoon where the plane was spotted to traveling the cattle ranch, big cities and small, I enjoyed following the characters around.

Gideon is endearing and darn smart, but he bugged me a little in this book. Maybe it was a bad mood -- and that sure is likely. But I do think that while, yes, he is an academic, Gideon should be able to remember and realize that he is talking a technical language that most people don't understand and not need to be reminded as often as he is that he must translate his mutterings so that they're understood for the layfolk.

I know a lot of academics in esoteric fields and they can still manage a dinner conversation by switching gears. And John? Gideon is not that tough a name. Try it. This 'doc' stuff gets old. Ah, they're sweet guys, I guess I'm just feeling a little crabby .

Reviewed by Andi Shechter, June 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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