Background

Aaron Elkins was born on July 24, 1935, in Brooklyn, New York. He is the son of Irving Abraham, a machinist, and Jennie Elkins, a homemaker, maiden name Katz.

Education

Aaron Elkins started his education at Hunter College, now of the City University of New York, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1956. Hunter was a full hour-and-a-half subway journey from home. Elkins traveled three hours a day on the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, with two transfers each way. He used underground to get to the place five days a week, ten months a year, from 1952 to 1956. Aaron says: "The subways were better then than they are now, but they weren’t much fun. If only I'd been a writer at the time, I would have had plenty of time for thinking deep thoughts and polishing and honing my perceptions." He mostly, however, read other people's novels - Louis Bromfield, Irwin Shaw, John P. Marquand, Jerome Weidman - or stared out the window at the tunnel.

He later was applied for graduate study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied from 1957 to 1959. By that time Elkins had his Master’s Degree and had won a more substantial graduate assistantship at the University. But he ran into personal and personality problems and left after two years without ever getting a doctorate. However, at Madison, Wisconsin, Aaron Elkins met his wife - Toby Siev, an occupational therapy student at the university. They met in 1957.

Elkins continued education at the University of Arizona, graduating with a Master of Arts in 1960, and a Master of Arts in 1962 at California State University, Los Angeles. He also studied at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Doctor of Education in 1976.

Career

Early in his first marriage, Aaron Elkins started on a meandering, aimless sort of dual career - in government and teaching - that lasted almost twenty years. It was nothing shady or irresponsible about it, and never was there a time when he couldn't support his family or come up with the mortgage payments on the new suburban house the couple bought in Orange County, California. Never was there a time when Elkins didn't have an eminently respectable job, and most of the time he had more than one. But as he says: "there was an awful lot of bouncing around from one eminently respectable job to another eminently respectable job, and not in any kind of career progression that I or anybody else could apprehend."

In those twenty years, Elkins taught at ten different colleges and universities, mostly evening classes but occasionally full-time, in three different subjects: anthropology, psychology, and management. And he worked full-time, mostly as an Administrator, for seven different organizations, most of them governmental. It was even more frenetic than it sounds because Aaron left several of those organizations only to return again later for a second or even a third stint. And then there was a two-year period when he worked during the day, taught a course or two at night, and completed a second master’s degree, this time in Psychology.

"It was hectic but not unpleasant," - Elkins says. He was never fired or asked to leave, and his employment records are stuffed with positive evaluations. But it wasn't satisfying either. The thing was, he could never figure out what he was doing serving as the safety and training director of Orange County, or teaching theories of management at California State University, or, for that matter, spending his weekends in the southern California sunshine applying leaf polish to our variegated Aucuba japonica hedge. Aaron says: "It was a very nice life, and I knew it; it just didn't seem like my life."

The big turnabout came into Aaron Elkin's when he married Charlotte - Charlotte Marie Trangmar, just one day after divorce from his ex-wife Toby became final - they lived separately for two years and finally divorced.

When Aaron and Charlotte married, he was the Chief of Employee Development for Contra Costa County in northern California and an Evening Lecturer in Anthropology and Supervision at Golden Gate University. Charlotte was an Artist selling her sculptures through several San Francisco galleries. "That seemed right for her, but my life didn't seem right for me, and she agreed with me on that. It was time, she made me see, to take my life into my own hands and get it moving again, even if I didn't quite know in what direction," - Elkins says.

Then, the encouragement took. By 1976 Aaron started and finished a doctorate in adult education at Berkeley - seventeen years after quitting the doctorate at Wisconsin - he resigned from his job at Contra Costa County, and accepted a two-year, dream position in Europe as a Lecturer with the University of Maryland's Overseas Division, moving every eight weeks to a new country and a new assignment.

It was the first bold thing he has done in decades, and it felt wonderful. Two years later, however, Elkin's contract was about to run out, and it was time for him to come home again. But there was nothing to come back to, because Aaron burnt the bridges, and didn't want to be a Chief of Employee Development anymore anyway. Moreover, he certainly couldn't live on part-time teaching.

Elkins mailed applications and resumes from Europe to dozens of American universities, but none of them had come to anything. They were winding up an assignment in Munich at the time, and Aaron began to wonder gloomily how hard it would be to unburn some of those burned bridges. Then, out of nowhere one morning, while he was at the dining room table grading a pile of papers on human evolution, his wife Charlotte uttered the "Eight Words That Changed Everything." "Well," she said, "you could always try writing a book." She advised the new-born author to write a thriller, but Aaron's first most exciting publication to date was "An Anthropological Analysis of the Skeletal Remains from CK-44, the Smullins Site," published as the second lead article in the Oklahoma Journal of Anthropology in October 1959. "I wasn't a writer, I was a - well, I wasn't sure what I was, but I certainly wasn't a novelist. I'd never even written a short story. My last serious literary endeavor had been "The Boogeyman." - Elkins says. One afternoon, lacking reasonable alternatives, or any alternatives at all, Aaron was mulling over the idea. "All right," his wife said, "use your imagination a little. Write about the adventures that might have happened to you." This was a pivotal conversation, the starting point of a transformation happened to Elkins.

Before that week was out, Aaron had begun The Need-to-Know Principle, about the European adventures of Gideon Oliver. The writing flowed, the characters developed, the plot thickened. But Elkins felt the book needed something different, something offbeat. So in the midst of what he can now see were rather a conventional goings-on, the author produced a burned car with a few charred skeletal fragments: a tiny piece of the jaw. a bit of tibia, a little chunk of the occiput. Then he put them into Gideon's hands and wrote a long, detailed description of how a forensic anthropologist would go about analyzing them. "Why not? I was supposed to write about what I knew, and what I knew were bones. If they were so fascinating to me, why shouldn't they be at least passably interesting to others?" - Elkins says. In the future, this particular part with bones description became one of his most recognizable author's features.

Aaron Elkins finished writing the book after returning to the United States, bought a copy of Writer's Market, and began sending query letters to those publishers listed as having an interest in mysteries. Walker and Company, the first publisher to agree to look at the manuscript - after twelve negative responses from other houses - bought it. Ruth Cavin, the senior editor who telephoned to express their interest, said they would be happy to publish it and would, in fact, be pleased to consider publishing future novels about Gideon Oliver. With some changes and a revised title, Elkins' novel was published in September 1982 as a Fellowship of Fear. That was the start of Aarons's writing career and the beginning of Gideon Oliver's adventures, which continued in the other 15 books.

Through the course of his career, Aaron Elkins worked as a Personnel Analyst at the Government of Los Angeles County, California, from 1960 to 1966, and as a Training Director at the Government of Orange County, California, from 1966 to 1969. Later, he worked at Santa Ana College, Santa Ana, California as an Instructor in Anthropology and Business from 1969 to 1970. At Ernst & Whinney, Chicago, Illinois, he worked as a Management Consultant from 1970 to 1971. Later, at the Government of Contra Costa County, California, Aaron worked as a Director of Management Development from 1971 to 1976, and from 1980 to 1983. Then he changed his place of work to the University of Maryland at College Park, European Division, Heidelberg, West Germany, where he was a Lecturer in Anthropology, Psychology, and Business from 1976 to 1978, and a Lecturer in Business from 1984 to 1985. After that, Elkins worked at the United States Office of Personnel Management, San Francisco, California, as a Management Analyst from 1979 to 1980. Finally, Aaron Elkins is a writer from 1984 to the present days. He also sometimes works as a Lecturer at California State University, Hayward and Fullerton, and at Golden Gate University.

Achievements

• Aaron Elkins is the creator of the modern forensic mystery, who pioneered the genre with Fellowship of Fear, which introduced the Skeleton Detective, Gideon Oliver. Among his awards are a best-novel Edgar and a Nero Wolfe Award. Aaron's books have been translated into a major ABC-TV series and have been selections of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Literary Guild, and the Readers Digest Condensed Mystery Series. In addition, his work has been published in over a dozen languages.

Works

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  • Dying on the Vine

    (Now the celebrated Skeleton Detective is visiting friends...)

    2012
  • Where Have All the Birdies Gone?

    (If there is one thing the young golfer Lee Ofsted doesn't...)

    2004
  • On the Fringe

    (Lee Ofsted and Graham Sheldon, her ex-cop fiance, have de...)

    2005
  • A Wicked Slice

    (Aaron Elkins, the author of the Edgar-winning Old Bones, ...)

    1989
  • Rotten Lies

    (New Mexico has more than its share of unique and well-pub...)

    1995
  • A Dangerous Talent

    (Alix London has a promising career as an art consultant, ...)

    2012
  • Make No Bones

    (Gideon Oliver is now faced with the most difficult challe...)

    1991
  • Where There's a Will

    (Edgar Award-winning author Aaron Elkins’s creation - fore...)

    2005
  • Curses!

    (To anthropologist Gideon Oliver, the renowned Skeleton De...)

    1989
  • Uneasy Relations

    (Buried ceremoniously, high in a cave on the Rock of Gibra...)

    2008
  • Murder in the Queen's Armes

    (The Skeleton Detective puzzles over the theft of an ancie...)

    1985
  • Turncoat

    (Pete Simon’s all-American life was everything he ever wan...)

    2002
  • A Glancing Light

    (A museum curator travels to Italy and looks into a murder...)

    1991
  • Twenty Blue Devils

    (The dead man is the manager of Tahiti’s Paradise Coffee P...)

    1997
  • Old Bones

    (An Edgar Award-winning mystery featuring the forensic ant...)

    1987
  • A Deceptive Clarity

    (An American museum curator in Berlin must find a fake pai...)

    1987
  • The Worst Thing

    (For Bryan Bennett, designing hostage negotiation programs...)

    2011
  • The Dark Place

    (Gideon Oliver earns his moniker "The Skeleton Detective" ...)

    1983
  • Old Scores

    (A notorious French art dealer is murdered in this “thorou...)

    1993
  • The Trouble with Mirrors

    (Alix London, the art restorer and FBI consultant renowned...)

    2016
  • Loot

    (In April 1945, the Nazis, reeling and near defeat, franti...)

    1999
  • Skull Duggery

    (Gideon is happy to be in Mexico with his wife until he is...)

    2009
  • Fellowship of Fear

    (First in the Edgar Award-winning series "that never disap...)

    1982
  • Unnatural Selection

    (When Gideon Oliver's wife Julie attends a conservation fo...)

    2006
  • Icy Clutches

    (On a trip to Glacier Bay, Alaska, the Skeleton Detective ...)

    1990
  • A Long Time Coming

    (It takes a real artist to solve a crime this big - in a b...)

    2018
  • Dead Men's Hearts

    (An ancient skeleton tossed in a garbage dump is the first...)

    1994
  • Little Tiny Teeth

    (Sailing the Amazon with a group of botanists, "Skeleton D...)

    2007
  • Nasty Breaks

    (Nothing proves that golf is a killer of a game better tha...)

    1997
  • Good Blood

    (Book 11 of the Gideon Oliver mysteries finds Gideon on va...)

    2004
  • Skeleton Dance

    (The French police call on the Skeleton Detective when a d...)

    2000
  • The Art Whisperer

    (When art conservator Alix London spots a forgery, she kno...)

    2014
  • A Cruise to Die For

    (This should be the cushiest job Alix London’s ever had. T...)

    2013
  • Switcheroo

    (The Skeleton Detective is back. A cold case dating from t...)

    2016

Membership

Aaron Elkins is a member of the Mystery Writers of America organization - the premier organization for mystery and crime writers, professionals allied to the crime-writing field, aspiring crime writers, and folks who just love to read crime fiction, based in New York City, New York, United States.

• 

  Aaron Elkins is a member of the Mystery Writers of America organization.

  Mystery Writers of America , United States

Personality

Aaron Elkins is described as talented, hardworking and also very passionate about what he does. The Novels by Elkins make him seem like a very fast-paced person but it is the complete opposite. He enjoys quiet time alone with his wife and two children. Elkins makes the reader experience mystery in a way he has never done before, his books are full of twists and turns that no one would have ever predicted. Although he is advanced in age, his consistency makes him unmatched.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Aaron Elkins is a gifted storyteller." - The Midwest Book Review
  
  "Elkins always presents a rich buffet of fascinating scientific facts... Learned and entertaining." - Booklist
  
  "He not only makes one think how interesting it would be to be an anthropologist, he almost persuades one that a certain amount of fun could be had out of being a skeleton." - Sarah Caudwell
  
  "Elkins has established himself as a master craftsman both in the Oliver series and in his stand-alone thrillers." - Booklist
  
  "Elkins is a master." - The Dallas Morning News
  
  "Aaron Elkins is witty and oh so clever." - The New York Daily News
  
  "Aaron Elkins is that most cherished of authors, one who leaves you feeling you've absorbed important knowledge you never knew you lacked... The essential key to unlocking the (mysteries)... is a forensic tidbit no reader will ever forget." - The Chicago Sun-Times

Interests

• Aaron Elkins used to be a boxer until he decided to prevent the possibility of brain damage.

Connections

Aaron Elkins was married to Toby Siev in 1959 and divorced in 1972. The same year he married Charlotte Trangmar, a writer and lives with her in Sequim, Washington, with two children - Laurence, and Robin Elkins.

ex-wife:

Toby Siev

Toby Siev is Aaron Elkins' ex-wife. They divorced in 1972, but their marriage produced two children - Laurence Elkins and Robin Elkins.

Wife:

Charlotte Elkins

Aaron Elkins married Charlotte Trangmar in 1972. They are both authors and write their books together.

Daughter:

Laurence Elkins

Son:

Robin Elkins

References

• Contemporary Authors vol. 233