Sat 9 Jan 2010
AARON ELKINS – Uneasy Relations. Berkley, hardcover; First Edition, July 2008. Paperback reprint: August 2009.
If my count is right, this is the 15th in Elkins’ series of fictional mystery cases he’s handed to forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver to solve. The first was Fellowship of Fear, which came out in 1982, which means that both Elkins and Oliver are getting up there in longevity, in terms of series that are still going. (Elkins will be 75 this year, but to this date, he’s shown no signs of slowing down.)
As a quick side note before continuing, there were five episodes of a “Gideon Oliver” TV series that was on for a short while in 1989, as you may well already know.
Starring Louis Gossett, Jr. (on the right), it may have been a program too far ahead of its time, as crime scene forensics are all the rage these days, or so I hear.
The “uneasy relations” in the title of this fairly recent outing are those between humans and the Neanderthals, who are not known to have interbred, or to have even been able to. The book takes place in Gibraltar, where a recent discovery has shocked the world of anthropology – two bodies, that of a human woman in a Neanderthal cave, along with that of a young boy in her arms – a missing link, if you will, of a another kind altogether.
There to delivery a paper on the subject, Gideon narrowly escapes death twice – the first as he’s pushed or he accidentally falls off the side of the Big Rock itself. (In completely non-appropriate fashion, I was immediately reminded of the “Beetle Bailey” comic strip.)
The second involves a defective microphone and a puddle of water Gideon would have been standing in. He scoffs at the thought that anyone with murderous intent was responsible for either incident, which simply put, means that he hasn’t been reading the previous 14 brushes with murder he’s been involved with.
That the story takes place in Gibraltar gives the author the opportunity to describe the small section of the map that it takes up in quite some detail, and superbly done.
There is also a lot of scientific background to be crowded into the book as well. The latter slows the book down more than the former, but obviously it’s quite necessary, as the solution to the case depends very much upon it.
All in all, in spite of the evil intentions of someone, this is a rather easy going book, with a small bit of detection at the end to wind things up in fine fashion. Of course the solution to the case also answers a question that kept flitting in and out of my brain all the while I was reading, one that (metaphysically speaking) made the motive a lot easier for me to put my finger on that Gideon Oliver simply didn’t – and couldn’t, alas – know anything about.
January 9th, 2010 at 6:47 am
The biggest problem with the Gideon Oliver series was that it was dull and Lou Gossett miscast. It never felt like Elkins character or much of anything really. Gossett played the scholarly Oliver as a sort of Black Indiana Jones, which isn’t Elkins take on the character at all. It was a good example of Hollywood taking a series of books and scrapping almost everything but the characters name and then wondering why the books fans didn’t watch.
Luckily Elkins and Oliver survived and a good series continued doing what it does best. The Elkins books may not be spectacular, but they are literate, intelligent, and generally provide Elkins fans what they want. He must be doing something right to survive that long and even survive that misguided television series.
January 9th, 2010 at 8:18 am
At one point I read through all the Oliver books that had been published and, for the most part, enjoyed them, but I’ve never had that real push to go back and catch up on the rest of the series.
Maybe some day I will.