Sleeping Bones

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 30. AUG. 1999

Lambda Award-winner Forrest seems to have lost some of her luster in her latest Kate Delafield mystery (after 1997's Apparition Alley). The usually cool Delafield, an LAPD detective, is unnerved when she and her new partner, rookie Joe Cameron, are called in to examine the body of well-known anthropologist Herman Layton, who has turned up dead at the famous La Brea Tar Pits with a puncture wound near his kidney. When Delafield and Cameron notify the victim's next of kin, they find out that Layton's daughter, Peri, is herself a world-renowned paleoanthropologist, whose career promises to surpass that of her mentors--the infamous Leakey family. The case takes an unusual turn after the discovery of a jawbone that resembles that of the two-million-year-old Peking Man, whose remains were lost nearly 30 years ago. Later, Delafield and Cameron learn of Herman Layton's involvement in the U.S. government's covert attempt to move the Peking Man from China for safekeeping after the Japanese invasion of WWII, an episode that left the adventurous anthropologist ostracized by his colleagues. The link between Peking Man and Layton's murder seems ironclad after CIA agent Nicholas Whitby appears and begins meddling in the case. Meanwhile, Delafield grapples with a shocking family secret revealed by her Aunt Agnes. Though the book has many action-packed scenes, Forrest fails to convincingly develop her various story lines, and several of the climaxes are far-fetched. Delafield remains an engaging protagonist, but the novel's turbulent events leave her, surprisingly, unchanged.