BEYOND THE BONE

“Super!” exults Zeugma Gray, the “unambiguously plump” niece of world-class archeologist Leo Pasquino. It's an exclamation triggered by an excavation: Zeugma's very own disinterring of a well-preserved Roman skeleton from its hidden hole on a hill in remote Cambria. But her joy is short-lived. The skeleton disappears, followed shortly by Uncle Leo. Eccentric Leo has in the past vanished more than once, but this absence is prolonged. Still, Zeugma—her very name redolent of energy and purpose—remains undaunted. Bristling, bustling, she sets about her search, which takes the form of some bruising confrontations with just about all who cross her path—from the mysterious Mister Diss to the enigmatic, otherworldly wanderer Crow. Included, most notably, is the good-looking Sam Lankenheath, chief officer of the North East Cumberland Development Council, whom she begins by cordially detesting and ends by liking immensely. He undergoes a similar conversion, ceasing at some point to view her as that annoying “little fat girl.” And Sam, it turns out, has also lost a relative, a favorite cousin. Are the two disappearances connected by some obscure but nefarious chain of circumstances? Any bets?

An early work (first published in England in 1975) that shows only fitful flashes of the wit and style that shine throughout the Dalziel-Pascoe partnership (Arms and the Women, 1999, etc.), making their series such a crime fiction favorite.