Skeleton Dance, by Aaron Elkins

Another in the series about Gideon Oliver. This time he's in France working on a book on weird forensic finds and hoaxes and is asked by the local police to look into a skeleton they have just uncovered. Skeletons in caves are relatively common in the area--it's where Cro-Magnon was first found--but this one is a little too recent and a little too complicated for the comfort of the police.

Of course, within hours of his first look at the case, he is whacked over the head and the skeleton in question is stolen. Then the head of the local institute, under whose aegis Gideon is visiting, is found with his head bashed in rather more severely.

As usual, Gideon finds small clues that lead to lots more questions about just whose skeleton was in the cave, and just how the former director (the one before the recently dead one) died. Everyone has thought he died in a plane crash, or rather they've thought he crashed his plane on purpose. Now people are wondering if that was just a convenient ruse.

Good, typical fare. Nothing outstanding, but lots of clever banter and some interesting factoids about the caves near Lascaux and the whole Paleolithic era discoveries.