enjoyed the exotic setting-standard characters and plot-enjoyable ( )

"When Gideon Oliver is invited to join an Amazon riverboat expedition with a group of research botanists, he anticipates a relaxing getaway from his academic and forensic duties in an exotic locale. But relaxation is not on the itinerary.

"There's stifling heat and humidity, giant bird-eating spiders, snakes, fire ants, jungle shamans, hallucinogenic plants, and corrupt military officials -- all of which are expected. What isn't expected is the primitive lance that is flung from the river's shore on the first day of the expedition, narrowly missing the leader of the botanists. Hanging from the lance is a shrunken human head -- the warning of the Chayacuro, a fierce tribe of headhunters. But they aren't the only danger.

"Hundreds of miles upriver, one of the botanists is killed in the middle of the night by a seemingly deranged passenger who leaps overboard and flees into the darkness. No one can explain why. Theories begin to simmer, though, and stories of long-past, half-forgotten enmities and resentments -- and new ones as well -- boil to the surface.

"Only when a fresh skeleton turns up in the river, scoured to the bone by voracious piranhas, does Gideon realize that in this jungle full of predators, humans may be the deadliest of all ..."
~~front & back flaps

Wow! There are moments of sheer terror in this one, more so than any of the previous books. Most of the book is relatively innocuous -- even the lance (which wasn't thrown from the shore, btw). And most of the characters also seem innocuous and ordinary, with the exception of Cisco, the "White Shaman," gaunt, gray-bearded, and hollow-cheeked, new faux combat boots, a grimy Chicago Whit Sox baseball cap and a red loose tank top that bared stringy, leathery arms, a dingy gray ponytail. Gideon summed him up: "All he needed was three coats and a supermarket cart stuffed with plastic garbage bags and he would have fit right in mumbling at the tourists from a park bench in Seattle's Pioneer Square."

And then there's Captain Alfredo Vargas, founder and president of Amazonia Cruise Lines (which consists solely of the Adelita, one hundred years old, a prison ship in the 1020s and '30s, a rescued half-sunk hulk rotting away on the river shore: a peeling, white-painted, metal-hulled, much-dinged old bucket of a two-decker about the length of a Greyhound bus.) Our captain is an overweight, bespeckled, heavily perspiring man in jeans, T-shirt, and a bright new captain's cap complete with woven gold-oak-leaf filigree -- a nervous, anxious little man.

The trip down the Amazon is uneventful except for the quickly simmering animosities towards the head of the ethnobotanical group, Professor Arden Scofield. It seems that every member of the party has a reason to dislike and distrust the professor, and he certainly makes our captain nervous as well.

Of course it all comes to a head, and of course our Gideon is caught right in the middle of the explosion. Luckily his friend John Lau is on the cruise as well, and between them they manage to ... well, you'll just have to read the book to find out how encounters with giant bird-eating spiders, head-hunting Chayacuro and the local bad guys of every description comes out. ( )

A classic who done it, set on a seedy Amazon cruise boat, complete with piranhas, headhunters, wild eyed botanists, drug dealers, giant spiders, and great food. Who could ask for more? ( )

I love Aaron Elkins research, the details, the lush evocative descriptions of sights that make me feel like i'm really there... and the utterly amazing ways that Dr. Oliver evaluates skeletal remains.... and manages to do it humbly. LOVE it. ( )

It was on the OAT reading list for the Amazon trip we are taking. It's descriptive and an easy read. Can I really deal with the heat and humidity? Chayacuro Indians sound terrifying and so is travel in SOuth America if drug dealing is involved. ( )