She put down the brochure. "What are you working on, anyway-the book?

The Book. Bones to Pick: Wrong Turns, Dead Ends, and Popular Misconceptions in the Study of Humankind. It had grown out of a public lecture he'd given a year earlier at the university, part of a survey-of-the-sciences extension series. His presentation, "Error, Gullibility, and Self-Deception in the Social Sciences," had been attended by Lester Rizzo, the executive editor of Javelin Press, who had approached Gideon afterward to ask if he would be interested in expanding the subject and turning it into a book for publication under Javelin's "Frontiers of Science" imprint.

Gideon had agreed, partly because he was flattered at the idea of joining the roster of distinguished scientists who had already contributed to the series, partly because he was looking for something different to do on his upcoming sabbatical, and partly because almost anything that was still ten months away from doing was likely to seem like a pretty do-able idea, whatever it was. The $15,000 advance-ready money, up front; a startlingly original concept to anyone accustomed to writing for the academic presses-hadn't hurt either. Even Lester's first editorial suggestion-the first of many ("You're writing for the masses here. What do you say we dumb down the title a little?") -hadn't put him seriously off; surely Lester knew more about selling books than he did. So stifling his natural reservations, he'd gone along with it, although not as far as Lester would have liked ( Bungles, Blunders, and Bloopers). Hence Bones to Pick, a reasonable compromise.

He nodded, filling their glasses from the bottle of Merlot. "Yeah, the book. I've been stuck on the same section for two days. I can't figure out how to get into it."

"What section is it?"

"You want Lester's title or mine?"

"Yours."

"'The Case of the Neologistically Prolix Hyperboreans.'" He smiled. "What do you think?"