Old Scores - Softcover

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.

A perceptive look at the world of museums, dealers, and collectors through the somewhat innocent eyes of Chris Norgren, curator of Renaissance art at the Seattle Art Museum (A Glancing Light, 1991, etc.). The museum has been offered the gift of a newly discovered Rembrandt by long-established French gallery owner Ren‚ Vachey, notorious over the years for outrageous put-downs of his peers. There's a deadline for acceptance, and no scientific testing for authenticity is permitted. A similar offer, of a L‚ger, has been made to the Mus‚e Barillot in Dijon--the victim some years back of one of Vachey's antic schemes. Is the offer legit or another trick to ridicule the establishment? To find out, Chris flies to France, meets Vachey and his dissolute son Christian, along with Edmond Froger, director of the Barillot; respected L‚ger expert Jean-Luc Charpentier; and a host of other art VIPs. In the midst of the festive hoopla, someone attacks Chris, a claimant for the Rembrandt surfaces, and Vachey is shot to death. Chris manages to make his decision about the painting, enjoy some Paris time with girlfriend Anne, and solve the murder too. An unpretentious, conversational style, convincing plot, laid- back hero, easy-to-take art-history, and a loving evocation of Paris--in a fresh, funny, thoroughly entertaining story. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.