The Bone Vault: A Novel - Softcover

Linda Fairstein

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743462734 ISBN 13: 9780743462730

Publisher: Pocket Star, 2003

Synopsis

Linda Fairstein delivered "a beguiling mix of murder, romance, and suspense" (Los Angeles Times) in her powerful New York Times bestseller The Deadhouse. Now, her acclaimed heroine, Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper, heads up a spellbinding investigation deep inside New York City's most magnificent and mysterious institutions.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exquisite Temple of Dendur, a monument to an ancient world, a very modern debate is raging at a gala dinner: a controversial new exhibit -- a mix of preeminent art scholarship and high-tech commercialism -- is fiercely opposed by many among the upper echelon of museum donors. Alex Cooper steps into this highly charged ring of power players only to make a much more troubling discovery: a young museum researcher has been murdered, her body shipped to the Met in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Together with cops Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex must penetrate the realm of the city's cultural elite to find a killer intent on keeping some secrets buried for eternity.

About this title

Review

One of the special pleasures of this lively series, written by a veteran sex-crimes investigator for the Manhattan district attorney's office, is the unusual glimpse it gives readers into corners of New York no tourist and few residents ever see (The Deadhouse). Here she turns her attention to the city's major cultural edifices--the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the Cloisters--and takes us behind their sealed doors to investigate the murder of a museum curator whose mummified body turns up in an ancient sarcophagus just before it's shipped out of the country. Together with her partners, cops Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, assistant DA Alexandra Cooper retraces Katrina Grooten's steps from her native South Africa to the discovery of her remains on a New Jersey pier. Along the way, the mysteries of the ancient world get equal billing with the more contemporary whodunit, and Cooper and her pals get a firsthand look at the murderous New York art world, too. Fairstein's thrillers offer an in-depth tour of truly off-the-beaten-path Manhattan as well as solid plotting, well-drawn characters, and snappy dialogue. What the DA's office lost when the author retired to write full-time is the mystery fan's biggest gain! --Jane Adams

About the Author

LINDA FAIRSTEIN, America's foremost legal expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, led the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan for twenty-five years. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first novel, Final Jeopardy, introduced the critically acclaimed character of Alexandra Cooper and was made into an ABC Movie of the Week starring Dana Delaney. The celebrated series has gone on to include the New York Times bestsellers Likely to Die, Cold Hit, The Deadhouse (winner of the Nero Wolfe Award for Best Crime Novel of 2001, and chosen as a "Best Book of 2001" by both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times), The Bone Vault, The Kills, Entombed, Death Dance, and Bad Blood. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her nonfiction book, Sexual Violence, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She lives with her husband in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard.

Visit her website at www.lindafairstein.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pocket Star
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0743462734
• ISBN 13: 9780743462730
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 528