BOOKSHELF: SUMMER READING 



By Laurence A. Marschall 



Science Most Foul 



Summertime, and the reading is easy. You don't escape to the beach or the mountains 

 to fritter away your lazy hours fretting about the pollution of the Arctic or the effects 

 of invasive species on Hawaiian biodiversity. No, what you want is a healthy homicide. 

 It's best if the crime is outrageous, the suspects menacing, and the investigator both noble 

 and quirky. Still, there's no reason not to mix in a little science with the mayhem. After 

 all, wasn't Sherlock Holmes a master chemist, and Watson a trained physician? 



Everyone has perennial choices, I'm sure. High on my list would be almost any nov- 

 el by Nevada Ban, whose crime-stopping park ranger Anna Pigeon seems to have worked 



at most of the great scenic 

 wonders of North America. 

 Less well known, but equal- 

 ly entertaining, is Morgan 

 O'Brien, the creation of the 

 Canadian novelist Alex 

 Brett. O'Brien may be one 

 of the few detectives whose 

 specialty is scientific-research 

 fraud, and her latest adven- 

 ture, Cold Dark Matter 

 (2005), authentically set in a large mountaintop observatory, involves murder, mayhem, 

 and, not incidentally, spectroscopy of distant galaxies. 



Thankfully, there seems to be no shortage of writers who can artfully blend mystery 

 and science. Among the most enjoyable new publications that have graced my nightstand 

 in recent months are these prime candidates for summer fun: 



Unnatural Selection by Aaron Elkins 

 (Berkley Books; $23.95) 



Gideon Oliver, forensic anthropolo- 

 gist extraordinaire, makes his thirteenth 

 appearance in this latest novel by Edgar 

 Award— winner Aaron Elkins. The set- 

 ting is pure Agatha Christie: a brood- 

 ing castle in the Isles of Scilly, off the 

 Cornish coast of England, where a small 

 group of environmental experts — in- 

 cluding Gideon's spouse, Julie, an ex- 

 pert on wildfire management — have as- 

 sembled for a weeklong brainstorming 

 session hosted by an eccen- 

 tric Russian entrepreneur. 

 While Julie deals with the in- 

 flammable mix of personali- 

 ties at the daily colloquia, 

 Gideon kills time examining 

 artifacts at the local museum. 

 Mixed in with the museum's 

 prehistoric skeletal remains, he 

 discovers, is a human bone that, 

 to his trained eye, shows signs of 

 murder most foul. Soon more 



bones show up on a local beach, and it 

 becomes clear that they all belong to the 

 victim of a brutal dismemberment that 

 took place a bit more recently than the 

 Bronze Age. There is no record, how- 

 ever, of any local person gone missing. 

 So whose bones are they? 



As Gideon ponders the evidence and 

 the local police chief investigates, the fog 

 rolls in and the fog rolls out. Tempers 

 flare and passions simmer among the 

 invitees at the castle. Then, one mist- 

 shrouded midnight, a par- 

 ticipant in the workshop 

 is forcibly precipitated 

 from a parapet. Could 

 there be a connection 

 between this murder 

 and the dismembered 

 bones? Well, of course 

 there is, but you must 

 resist the temptation to 

 leapfrog to the oblig- 

 atory scene in which 

 all the assembled sus- 



pects find out which of them is guilty. 

 The pleasure of summer reading lies not 

 in resolution but in investigation, and 

 Elkins keeps things moving with plen- 

 ty of local atmosphere, compelling 

 characterization, and a refreshingly low 

 level of violence. CSI: Miami it's not, 

 but it would make a lovely episode on 

 the BBC Mystery Monday series. 



The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darn- 

 ton (Alfred A. Knopf; $24.95) 



After five vigorous years aboard the 

 H.M.S. Beagle, Charles Darwin re- 

 turned to England a broken man. His 

 mind was sharper than ever, to be sure, 

 and many decades of groundbreaking 

 research and writing lay ahead, but his 

 body was already beginning to fail. For 

 the rest of his life he complained of nau- 

 sea, vomiting, flatulence, skin rashes, 

 headaches, vertigo, and countless other 

 maladies. For all of them he sought 

 remedies that, given the primitive state 

 of medicine at the time, may have done 

 him more harm than good. At various 

 times Darwin dosed himself with opi- 

 um, shocked himself with electricity, 

 and wrapped his body with towels 

 soaked in freezing water — all to no avail. 



Darwin's illness is a real historical 

 mystery: How could a young man who 

 galloped on horseback over the Pam- 

 pas and backpacked (sans Gore-Tex) in 

 the Andes, turn so prematurely into an 

 elderly invalid, obsessed with rampant 

 bodily dysfunctions? 



To the shelf of scholarly mono- 

 graphs addressing this question, vaca- 

 tion readers should welcome The Dar- 

 win Conspiracy, a fast-paced novel of 

 romance and intellectual intrigue by 

 John Darnton, who was editor and 

 foreign correspondent for The New 

 York Times. Its protagonists are Hugh 

 Kellem, an anthropologist, and Beth 

 Dulcimer, an evolutionary biologist, 

 whose pursuit of the Darwinian lore — 

 and of each other — begins on a remote 

 island of the Galapagos, amidst the 

 finches that helped inspire the theory 

 of natural selection. 



The two return to England and be- 

 come fascinated with the hidden threads 



48 



NATURAL HISTORY July/August 2006 



