Skeleton Dance — Aaron Elkins

There is a small village in France that is well known for pate de foie gras ... and bones. Boasting the largest concentration of prehistoric fossils in Europe, Les Eyzies-de Tayac is the home of the prestigious Institut de Prehistoire where eminent scientists study and squabble ...and perhaps, on occasion, commit murder.

Professor Gideon Oliver knows bones. That's why the mild-mannered sometime-investigator is the forensic specialist the Chief Inspector in Les Eyzies calls when a local dog emerges from a nearby cave carrying parts of a human skeleton--and a not-all-that-long-ago-interred one at that. But murder piles on murder--and surprise upon electrifying surprise-following Gideon's arrival, as his search for answers leads him quickly into the darkest corners of the scientific community ... and sets him on a shocking trail of death, greed, and deception nearly forty thousand years in the making.