"Suspensful Stand-Out Novel"

Fairstein once again draws on her own experiences with protagonist Alexandra Cooper, who works as the head of the Sex Crimes Unit of Manhattan D.A.'s Office, a position previously held by the author. A party at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art soon leads to a murder investigation when director Pierre Thibodaux enlists Alex's help to find out why an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, awaiting shipment to Egypt from a New Jersey pier, inexplicably contains the well-preserved remains of a young woman, not an Egyptian princess as presumed, but a twenty- first century woman.

When the photograph of the deceased woman identifies her as Katrina Grooten by Thibodaux's assistant, Cooper and Detective Mike Chapman attempt to discover who would have had access to the sarcophagus in which she was buried and why anyone would have wanted the young museum employee dead. Working at the Cloisters, where the Met housed its medieval art, Katrina was part of a project that included the Museum of Natural History in a joint bestiary exhibit studying ancient monster type beasts.

While the varied descriptions of the museum exhibits and the vastness of the holdings may serve for dry reading, Ms. Fairstein keeps the pace flowing with her study of the interpersonal relationship between Detective Chapman and Alex, in an especially touching reminiscence of the aftermath of September eleventh. Fairstein's first-hand knowledge of the Manhattan D.A.'s office allows her to imbue her main character with realism, as she chronicles Alex's complex and ever expanding caseload. This truly stand out read will have readers reaching for more Alex Cooper novels and eagerly anticipating future ones.

Reviewed by Sheri Melnick
Posted January 20, 2004

Summary

The New York Times bestselling author and renowned former Manhattan prosecutor follows her Nero Award-winning The Deadhouse with a mesmerizing new Alexandra Cooper novel set at the crossroads of big money, high culture, and murder...

The Bone Vault begins in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's glorious Temple of Dendur, where wealthy donors have gathered to celebrate a controversial new exhibit.

An uneasy mix of scholarship, showbiz, and aggressive marketing, "A Modern Bestiary" will be a joint venture of the Met and the American Museum of Natural History. With its IMAX time trips and Rembrandt refrigerator magnets, the "Bestiary" has raised fierce opposition from some of New York's museum elite.

Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper, off duty for the evening, observes the developing tensions with bemused interest until Met director Pierre Thibodaux pulls her aside. He needs her advice. There's an urgent problem out at a loading dock on a New Jersey pier.

A Twelfth Dynasty mummified princess, enclosed for eternity in a huge stone sarcophagus, is about to take a long voyage to Cairo as part of a routine museum exchange. But Cleopatra is missing, and in her place is the not-so- mummified body of a woman many centuries younger than her royal predecessor.

Who is this woman with the small physique, the dark hair, and the shiny barrette? What is her connection, if any, to the rarefied world of priceless art and objects? And how and when did she become entombed in the sarcophagus?

Teaming with cops Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex must explore behind the scenes at the elegant but severe Metropolitan, travel uptown to the remote setting of the Cloisters and its medieval trove of funerary art, and on to the massive array of beasts and bones at the Museum of Natural History. Somewhere deep within the bowels of one of these great cultural centers, a killer may wait.

Atmospheric, chilling, and rich with the kind of procedural authenticity that only Linda Fairstein can provide, The Bone Vault is a page-turning tour de force from one of crime writing's brightest stars.