Bones to Pick: A Phoebe Fairfax Mystery

Bones to Pick finds Calgary television photographer Phoebe Fairfax at Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology taping the black-tie opening of a display of important hominid fossils discovered on a recent African dig by world-renowned paleoanthropologist Graham Maxwell. Thanks to his inflated ego and dubious honesty, Maxwell has made many enemies over the forty years since his graduation from the University of Alberta. When Phoebe discovers the famous scientist dead, his skull bashed in by a fossil dinosaur egg and his priceless fossils missing, there is no shortage of suspects, some with grudges nurtured over forty years. Embroiled with Phoebe in this murderous comedy are an elderly professor who spends his summers living an experiment in de-evolving ; Maxwell’s assistant who for years has played second fiddle to a man he considers second-rate; Maxwell’s young, love struck assistant, the latest in a long series, who realizes she is soon to pass her best-before date; and a retired oil geologist now heading an anti-evolution protest group, the Geologists For Jesus. As much social comedy as mystery, Bones to Pick plays out its tale of past sins and present murder against the stark beauty of the Alberta badlands.