Edgar (R) Award-winning author Aaron Elkins's creation-forensics professor Gideon Oliver-has been hailed by the Chicago Tribune as a likable, down-to-earth, cerebral sleuth. Now the celebrated Skeleton Detective unearths a wealthy family's darkest secrets...

Alex Torkelsson has just gotten word: his late uncle Magnus's plane has been found south of Hawaii's Big Island after ten long years. So too have Magnus's few skeletal remains, now handed over to the only man who can fit together the pieces of this mystery...

What forensic detective Gideon Oliver discovers could shake the Torkelsson family tree to its very roots. But this time his work is yielding more questions about the past than answers. Questions about the long-ago execution-style murder of Magnus's brother...about a mysterious will that benefits-as well as incriminates-its heirs...and most disturbing of all: questions as to the true identity of the corpse in the lagoon. As lie upon lie is revealed, Gideon's only hope is to let the bones of the dead condemn the living-before the living take revenge.