The Barnes & Noble Review
Powerful family dynamics add drama and complexity to this entry in the Edgar Award–winning Gideon Oliver series. World-renowned professor of forensic anthropology Gideon Oliver (a.k.a. the Skeleton Detective) is on vacation with his wife and their friend Phil. They're enjoying the delights of the Italian countryside when Phil casually suggests a detour to meet his mother's family...and unknowingly invites them into tragedy. The aristocratic de Grazias inhabit a rambling villa on their own private island, a setting rich in history and shrouded in secrets. The first enigma they encounter there is that Achille, the teenage heir to the family's billion-dollar construction company, has been kidnapped. The second is the tale of the strange circumstances surrounding the missing boy's father's conception and birth. Although Phil wants to support his family in the dark days after Achille's disappearance, there is little he and his friends can do...until a skeleton is unearthed and the local police turn to Gideon for expert assistance. It's obvious from the first that the bones are too old to be Achille's, but Gideon's forensic examination soon raises equally disturbing questions about the death of the boy's grandfather, who was presumed drowned ten years before. Untangling the threads of that decade-old murder leads Gideon in unexpected directions that illuminate the modern crime, the motives and identity of Achille's kidnapper, and some surprising facts about Phil's position in this aristocratic Italian family. The details of Italian police work, Gideon's labors in his makeshift forensic laboratory, and the hidden longings and open hatreds of the de Grazia family make Good Blood a fast, fascinating read. Sue Stone