I DON'T KNOW WHY I FELT SICK. I MEAN, YES, IT WAS THE FIRST DEAD BODY I EVER SAW. BUT I SHOULD HAVE BEEN MORE COMFORTABLE. AFTER ALL, MY WHOLE FAMILY LIKES DEAD THINGS.... Thirteen-year-old Finnegan Zwake is staying with his Uncle Stoppard, a bestselling mystery writer, and still hoping his parents will return from an archaeological expedition in Iceland. They disappeared there several years ago. Life with his uncle is fairly normal -- until the day Finn discovers a body in the basement. A dead body. It's in the storage area where Finn's parents left behind gold treasure from their last expedition. And missing from the storage space is a magnificent Mayan gold figure, the Horizontal Man.... Michael Dahl, the author of more than a dozen non?ction books, has also published poetry and plays. The Viking Claw is Dahl's fourth Finnegan Zwake mystery. The earlier titles in the series are The Horizontal Man, The Worm Tunnel, and The Ruby Raven. Dahl is also the author of Scooter Spies, a series of mysteries for younger readers, whose titles include The Wheels That Vanished and The Ghost That Barked. A theater director, actor, and comedian in Minneapolis, Dahl has a wide variety of unusual creatures in his household: Venus's-?ytraps, ?ddler crabs, African dwarf frogs, an elementary school teacher, and an Australian red-heeler named Gus. He can be e-mailed at ?nnswake@aol.com. Chapter 1: The Horizontal Man Before I saw the dead body, I used to like raisins. In fact, I used to love raisins: raisin toast, raisin muffins, raisin pudding, raisin cereal. Now I look at one of those dried-up grapes, and all I see is a dried-out corpse. This morning at the breakfast table Uncle Stoppard set a plate in front of me with two giant raisin muffins, steaming with melted butter. I must have had a funny look on my face, because right away Uncle Stoppard asked what was wrong. "You promise you won't laugh?" I asked. "Promise," he said. So I told him. His cucumber-green eyes got squinty: it was his serious look. "But, Finnegan," he said. "And I don't mean to say it sounds weird," he said. "But, why on earth should raisins remind you of that dead body we found in the -- " Uncle Stoppard stopped. He stared down at the muffin on his own plate. Then he stared at me. Then he stared at the muffin again. "Because of the...rodents?" he said quietly. "Yeah," I said. "The...rodents." Uncle Stoppard's complexion began to match the color of his eyes. He pushed himself away from the table, scooped up our plates, and scraped all four muffins into the waste can. "How do you feel about waffles?" he said. I don't know why I felt that sick. I mean, yes, it was the first dead body I ever saw. But I should have been more comfortable. After all, my whole family loves dead things. One of my grandmothers, for instance, was a paleontologist and collected fossils for museums. My grandfather worked in the Dead Letter department of the Tombstone, Arizona, post office. Aunt Verona became a taxidermist after she got out of the Army, and used to display all her preserved pets in mock battle scenes on her front lawn. Uncle Stoppard says her neighbors called the place "The WAC's Museum." Dad's favorite band is the Grateful Dead. Mom's favorite writer is Robert Graves. Both my parents were archeologists. I mean, are archeologists. I mean, both. Both are both. As of this moment they're alive, but considered legally dead, since they disappeared over seven years ago while searching for Tquuli the Haunted City somewhere among the frozen volcano-cones of Iceland. (It was written up in Peephole magazine.) How do I know they're alive? I just know. I'm staying with Uncle Stoppard until my parents come back. To look at us, you'd never guess we were related. Uncle Stoppard is tall and muscular with wavy red hair, crinkly green eyes, and a big nose (he calls it aquiline). I am not tall or muscular, have light-brown hair, pale skin, and freckles. Uncle Stoppard says I have a moccachino crop, java eyes, and a triple-latte complexion with nutmeg sprinkles. Uncle Stoppard likes drinking coffee. He also likes using unusual words. The only thing we share is our glasses. I mean, we both wear glasses. And, of course, we share the family fondness for dead things: I like ghost stories and Uncle Stop spends most of his time plotting to kill people. We've been living together a little more than seven years now, and I guess I've gotten used to living in his apartment in Minneapolis. I don't think about my parents as much as I used to. Now I only think about them a couple times a day. Poor Uncle Stoppard. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the raisins at breakfast. Last year, Uncle Stoppard had a hard time eating because of fingerprints. He was reading all about fingerprints in these crime books of his and he learned What they're made of. Sweat. I mean, fingerprints are made of sweat, not the crime books. And sweat is full of stuff like ammonia, phosphate, uric a