cover image Death Among the Fossils: Who Killed the Notorious Anthropologist in Africa?

Death Among the Fossils: Who Killed the Notorious Anthropologist in Africa?

Isadore Durant. University of New Mexico Press, $12.95 (265pp) ISBN 978-0-8263-1950-0

East Africa, the cradle of human evolution, turns out, in this elegant debut, to be a cauldron of professional and personal jealousies for the paleoanthropologists mining its fossil fields. In the remote and inhospitable reaches of the country of Asalia, a conference brings together an eccentric group of scientists and graduate students who compete for meager research funds and dream of making the ultimate hominid find. None is more cutthroat than American Bob Shafer, who has betrayed or undermined just about every other attendee. But Shafer, on the verge of announcing a major discovery, has disappeared. Among those possibly responsible for his vanishing are a spurned lover; a grand lady of anthropology and her nephew; an English expatriate; a Dutchman; a Belgian; and Schafer's former prot g , Balebe Thanatu. When Balebe's friend Cynthia Cavallo joins his dig a year later, and Shafer's body is finally found, the two graduate students are engulfed by the mystery, and by their growing affection for each other. Durant writes finely detailed descriptions of East Africa's arid terrain and of its emergence from colonialism. Though the novel's suspense is muted, her knowledge of field research and ability to portray credibly the odd characters who surround academia make the book an absorbing, as well as educational, read. (Mar.)