Only Flesh and Bones

by Sarah Andrews

Book Overview

Still recuperating from her father's death and her mother's recovery from alcohol addiction, geologist and amateur sleuth Emily "Em" Hansen is out of work and unhappily whiling away her time on her... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312967020
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.8" x 1.0" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Not quite as interesting as her other works

The thing I found most intriguing about the Sarah Andrews series is the way the author hooks geologic themes within a mystery. For example, Tensleep centers around the drilling of an oil well, Faultline centers around seismology.Flesh and Bones is a wonderful story, and has some of Sarah Andrew's best character development. My only disappointment was the lack of the geologic theme. Flesh and Bones begins with a voyeuristic look into the life of a Mariam Menkin. Mariam was a baby boomer who betrayed both her sex and the sixties to marry a "nice guy." In this work, we find scattered pieces of Mariam's diary and gradually glue together the pieces of how and why she was murdered.The book brings us on a tour of Wyoming and Colorado as Em Hansen digs up clues in Douglas, Denver and Saratoga Springs. We meet good and bad cattle ranchers and some suspicious activities at oil companies.If you are reading the Em Hansen series for the geological themes; you can skip this one. Even in the overall development of the Em Hansen character, Only Flesh and Bones plays a less important role than the other works. If you have limited time for reading, I would read all the other novels first.

interesting heroine

I like Em Hansen because she is smart. I also enjoyed this book. On the downside, however, some of her behavior in this book does not make human sense -- it seem outright nutty. The author herself makes clear that this is intentional on her part in the last few pages; clearly it is an emerging factor in Em's character. While I'm not sure i believe in it, it does make the books interesting.

Terrific

Josiah "JC" Menkin leaves Denver to visit his former employee, geologist Emily Hansen to plead with his former employee to help him with his teenage daughter, Cecilia. The teen has blocked out the trauma of witnessing the murder of her mother, Miriam. Em, an unemployed geologist and part time amateur sleuth reluctantly agrees to try to help Cecilia because she has always liked the teen. Em convinces herself that in order for her to help Cecilia she needs to learn what really happened to Miriam. She begins to investigate the deceased's background and the murder. Em soon places her own life in jeopardy due to the investigation taking her to a sidebar involving cocaine smuggling. If Em is not careful, her curiosity could ultimately lead to her own death. ONLY FLESH AND BONES is a refreshing amateur sleuth tale due to the introspective yet extroverted Em and Chandler (a refreshing charismatic criminal, who hopefully will reappear in a future Hansen novel). The novel contains a good who-done-it filled with lots of good humor (especially targeted is the psychiatry business). Sarah Andrews has developed an endearing protagonist, whose appearances are worth reading by fans of amateur sleuth mysteries.Harriet Klausner Harriet Klausner

This is Sarah Andrew's best yet in the Em Hansen series.

ONLY FLESH AND BONES is the strongest book yet in the excellent series of Em Hansen mysteries written by Sarah Andrews. While it has some exciting action scenes, it is essentially a probe inside the minds of the well-developed characters, centering on Cecelia, the troubled daughter of a Denver oil tycoon who may have repressed memories that would lead to the unraveling of the mysterious death of her mother. Love, revenge, and international deals in the multi-millions combine to create a web of intrigue that Em, a petroleum geologist by training, but a private investigator by force of circumstance, must use all her analytical skills -- and sheer grit and gumption -- to unravel. While this book would provide a very gripping introduction to the Em Hansen series, I urge fellow readers who are unacquainted as yet with this scrappy, independent young woman to begin at the beginning, with TENSLEEP (1994) which introduces you to Em as a young woman mud-logger on a Wyoming oil rig, deep in a macho ambiente and getting into trouble investigating possible foul play. Then continue to A FALL IN DENVER (1996), where Em finds herself in a staff geologist job for a big oil company, and once again immersed in intrigue and foul play. And, finally, in MOTHER NATURE (1997), where Em, drawing on her geology and environmental skills, investigates the mysterious death of a powerful Senator's daughter through beautifully drawn Northern California scenes. All these volumes are informed by the fact that the author, Sarah Andrews, is herself a geologist, and clearly loves the natural beauty of the scenes she describes. I feel that this background will make ONLY FLESH AND BONES even more enjoyable, besides providing you with many hours' of great entertainment.