Dying on the Vine (A Gideon Oliver Mystery)
*Starred Review* The latest in Elkins’ Edgar-winning Gideon Oliver series delivers another delicious blend of forensic science and a to-die-for setting. Part of Elkins’ appeal is the way he gives intriguing facts and travel tips for exotic or romantic settings. This time it’s Florence and the vineyards of Val d’Arno. When Oliver, a forensic anthropologist and professor at the University of Washington, gives a lecture at an international symposium in Florence on how skeletal remains can help solve murders, the local cops offer to take the class to view a set of bones, remnants from a murder-homicide solved the preceding year. Or was it? As usual in this series, the bones speak to Gideon Oliver in ways that the cops missed, and in ways the reader will find both compelling and convincing. The bones belong to the wife of another victim, her husband, whose body was cremated. This husband and wife (here comes the plot stretch) were the heads of a wine-making clan that Oliver and his wife were scheduled to visit. Oliver’s intensive forensic exam, plus his questioning of the relatives after he and his wife are ensconced in the family home, totally upends the police conclusions. The family turns out to be as tricky as the Borgias, and the motives for murder elbow each other for precedence. Much about wine, Florence, forensics, and evil. Great bouquet. --Connie Fletcher