Fellowship of Fear, by Aaron Elkins

Fellowship of Fear, by Aaron Elkins, is the very first Gideon Oliver mystery, and it is atypical of the series. It is more of a spy novel than a detective novel.



Gideon's past history is introduced, including the death of a beloved spouse. He comes to Germany as a guest-lecturer at Army Air Bases in Germany...only a lot of people seem to think he's much more... like a spy.

Here are a few sample paragraphs:

Gideon Oliver was not a conventionally handsome man, and he knew it. He also knew that his big frame, broken nose, and soft borwn eyes gave him a gentle ruggedness that many women found attractive.

He was by no means on the prowl. His wife of nine years, whom he had loved wthi all his soul, had died in an automobile accident two years earlier, and just as he had found no one to compare with her when she was alive, he had found no one since, and he wasn't even looking hard. Still, even if not overtly susceptible to women, he was by no means immune, and felt, through the wine-induced lassitude, a familiar stirring whenever Janet rearranged her long legs and looked briefly at him wiht unmistakeably friendly intent.

The other two at the table had contributed less to the evening's pleasures. Bruce Danzig, the faculty librarian, was a fussy little man with fussy little hands and feet and a neat little lump of a pot belly - like a cantaloupe - across the exact center of which his belt lay. He delivered his words with irritating precision, pursing and stretching his lips lest a single phoneme emerge incompletely rounded.

On Gideon's other side, between him and Janet, saw Eric Bozzini, assistant professor of psychology. Three times during the meal he described himself as a laid-back Californian, and groomed himself for the part: long hair, neatly trimmed into a sort of boy cut below the ears, a Pancho Villa mustache, tinted glasses that never seemed to come off, and an open-throated shirt revealing some sort of canine attached to a thin, gold chain and nestling on a tanned, hairy chest. But at something near Gideon's own age of thirty-eight, the image was wearing a little thing; a widow's peak was discernible under the brushed forward hairline, the face was a little fleshy, the chest a trifle puffy and soft-looking. Even the bronze skin seemed sunlamp induced.

The series
Fellowship of Fear (1982)
The Dark Place (1983)
Murder in the Queen's Armes (1985)
Old Bones (1987)
Curses! (1989)
Icy Clutches (1990)
Make No Bones (1991)
Dead Men's Hearts (1994)
Twenty Blue Devils (1997)
Skeleton Dance (2000)
Good Blood (2004)
Where There's a Will (2005)
Unnatural Selection (2006)
Little Tiny Teeth (2007)
Uneasy Relations (2008)
Skull Duggery (2009)