Fantastic Feast for Forensic Fans
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If you are a long-time fan of the Gideon Oliver series, you'll adore this book. If you haven't read any of the earlier books, you'll find Unnatural Selection to be a pleasant entry point to the series.
Gideon's forest ranger wife, Julie, is one of the stars at a conference hosted by an eccentric Russian, Vasily Kozlov, held in impressive Star Castle (a place you can visit for real in its incarnation as "St. Mary's premier restaurant-hotel"). Each of the stars has in common the lack of a Ph.D. which leaves Gideon sniffing suspiciously in the air. He hopes to avoid the conference as much as possible because he assumes that it will be mostly dreck, except for Julie's paper, of course.
Gideon receives an invitation to visit the local museum to look at odd bones that have washed up ashore. One of the bones disturbs Gideon . . . and he takes it over to the local constabulary. The head man there, Sergeant Clapper, isn't too impressed at first with Gideon's theories. But his junior Constable Robb wears Clapper down, and the investigation begins.
What follows is some remarkable research and writing about how you might discern the scene of a crime and the perpetrator after beginning with one bone. Anyone who enjoys the television shows about crime scene investigations will find this book to be quite rewarding.
There's also lots of humor at the expense of those who pretend to surround their opinions with the veneer of science while not having a proper approach in hand. The title itself indirectly refers to one of the "stars" who argues that hunting furthers natural selection. Gideon straightens him out -- it's unnatural selection because the more fit examples of the species are killed for their food and trophy value.
The book's main weakness is that determining the murderer is far too easy once the forensics have told their story. The solution is strongly hinted at even before that point.
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