Little Tiny Teeth - Hardcover

Aaron Elkins is the author of the Edgar Award-winning Gideon Oliver mysteries.

Elkins, who has won the Edgar Award for his Gideon Oliver series, trots out forensic anthropology professor Oliver for another adventure, this time along the Amazon River. Elkins totally avoids the sin of sloth represented by some mystery writers who habitually underresearch their topics. Elkins always presents a rich buffet of fascinating scientific facts, and this time his table overflows with information about the Amazon's wildlife and, even more intriguingly, its plant life, long used by natives as medicine and now studied by medical ethnobotanists. Elkins, generous with background, is a bit too generous with setup: by the time Professor Oliver and the research botanists actually get to the Amazon, readers may be tired of the overly long, and-then-there-were-none-style introductions to each character. Once underway on the Amazon, however, things quickly pick up, as a shrunken head, carried by a spear, lands on deck, and Oliver's detective skills are called into play when one of the botanists is murdered. Learned and entertaining. Connie Fletcher
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