Aaron J Elkins Good Blood

Cold Blood

Aaron Elkins

Berkley, Feb 2004, $23.25, 304 pp.

ISBN 0425194116

In the village of Stresa, near Lake Maggiore, Italy a well planned kidnapping is carried out. Achille de Grazia, the sixteen-year-old heir to wealthy and aristocratic Vincenzo, the owner of numerous business enterprises and his own island, is being ransomed for the sum of five million Euros. While the family is raising the money, the bones of a murdered man are found at a de Grazia construction site.

Forensic anthropologist Gideon Oliver, his wife Julie and a de Grazia cousin Phil are in Stresa to host a "Travel of the Cheap Tour." The carbineer in the form of Colonel Caravale asks Gideon to help him identify the skeleton and find out the cause of death. With the information Gideon gives him, Caravale identifies the body of Vincenzo's father who was thought to be lost at sea. After Achille is returned, somebody tries to steal the bones and kill Gideon, making him believe that the two crimes are linked in some manner. Further investigation proves he is right but it does not get him any closer to identifying the perpetrator or the mastermind who is orchestrating events.

After reading COLD BLOOD, an appropriate title if ever there was one, readers will find themselves wishing they could go Italy and immerse themselves in the culture, just not the sidebar that Gideon becomes part of. With only a few days of holiday under his belt, Gideon is so antsy to get back to work that he leaps into the case and makes such a good impression on the colonel that he becomes his de facto partner. This is an exciting police procedural set among the blue bloods of Italian society.

Harriet Klausner