Sarah Andrews’s Bone Hunter has a dinosaur skeleton on the cover, and drags “forensic geologist” Em Hansen into the Utah desert to solve a mystery. Yes, this was one of the lighter reads. If you need the elevator pitch, it’s “CSI meets paleontology meets the Mormons, with an edge of romance to tease.” (OK, that’s a twisted elevator, but I’m not one for plot summaries.) The author tries a bit too hard to dig (ahem) into the way religion and science clash, but it’s not a bad mystery all the same.
I’ve spent a weekend in Salt Lake City, near the University of Utah, and we visited the museum described in the book — pretty good place to view those old bones!