Monday, July 29, 2013

Teaser Tuesday 183: Old Bones

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!


This week I am sharing the opening paragraph of Old Bones by Aaron Elkins, the fourth book in his Gideon Oliver mystery series and winner of the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Mystery of 1987. It's a bit more than two lines, but I think you will agree that the mood it paints is amazing. Tell me this doesn't make you shiver:


So still and silent was the fog-wreathed form that it might have been an angular, black boulder. But there are no boulders, angular or otherwise, to mar the immense, flat tidal plain that is Month St. Michel Bay. When the tide is out there is only sand, more than a hundred square miles of it. And when the tide is in, the plain becomes a vast, rolling ocean from which the great abbey-citadel of Mont St. Michel—St. Michael’s Mount—rears like some stupendous, God-made thing of dark and gloomy granite, all narrow Gothic arches and stark, medieval perpendiculars.



ABOUT THE BOOK:

When the treacherous tides of Mont St. Michel claim the aged patriarch of the du Rocher family, the authorities accept the verdict of "accidental drowning." But the unfortunate event is followed too quickly by a strange discovery: the discovery of a human skeleton, wrapped in butcher paper, beneath the stone flooring of the ancient du Rocher chateau.

Dr. Gideon Oliver, the American "skeleton detective," is asked to examine the bones. His analysis correlates with the turning up of other clues, including the scorched remnants of an S.S. Obersturmbannfürher’s uniform—and the police conclude that the remains are those of a Nazi officer known to have been murdered in the area in 1942.

But Oliver has his doubts. Then, when one of the remaining du Rochers is poisoned, the doubts gel into one certainty: someone wants old secrets to remain buried . . . to conceal identities of murderers past and present.




10 comments:

Kathy Martin said...

This sounds great. I am not familiar with the series and will have to check it out. Come see my teasers for Charmed Vengeance by Suzanne Lazear and Saving Paradise by Mike Bond. Happy reading!

Unknown said...

I have never heard of this series but wowza, mysterious! Thanks for sharing and thank you for stopping by.. I hope you enjoy reading the rest of this book. :)

- Sadie @ Lyrics.

Heather said...

Kathy: I had never heard of this author until he was a featured author for the Cozy Mysteries group at Goodreads. I liked the first couple I read, so have been hunting down the rest of the series. Some of the later books in the series have actually proven more difficult to find than earlier ones. I now have the series through book 16, and decided I should really try to catch up on it a bit. This one has been good so far.

Heather said...

Hi Sadie! The opening paragraph certainly set an ominous tone for what was to follow. I'm about halfway through and enjoying the book so far. :)

Greg said...

Awesome teaser!! I've always thought Mont St Michel was so cool, and this mystery sounds great. I'll be checking this one out!

Heather said...

Greg: Mont St. Michel has long intrigued me, and I would love to see it some day--not to mention other areas of Bretagne and France in general. I got about halfway through last night before I could no longer keep my eyes open. Good mystery so far. Thanks for visiting!

Jessica @ a GREAT read said...

Nice tease! Haven't heard of this one! Hope you're enjoying it!

Thanks for visiting my teaser!

Yvonne said...

Interesting teaser!

Unknown said...

Very descriptive teaser. Thanks for sharing!

Heather said...

Thanks, Jessica~ Finished last night and it was good!

Yvonne: Thank you! ☺

Andrea: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it!