FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
The fifth bestselling mystery from the former head of the Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit, Linda Fairstein's The Bone Vault is another hard-hitting, fast-paced, gritty tale of true-to-life murder and mayhem. When the body of a young scholar is found in an ancient sarcophagus, Assistant D.A. Alex Cooper sets out to bring the killer to justice. The victim worked for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Alex soon suspects that her murder is connected somehow to the intense rivalry between the Met and its sister institution, the American Museum of Natural History -- two great New York City museums embarking upon their first cooperative exhibition. As Alex searches for clues among the millions of artifacts tucked away in the attics, exhibit halls, and sub-basements of the museums, she discovers that practically everyone had ready access to the means used in the murder...and to methods for disposing of the mummy that was displaced to make room for the new corpse as well. Of course, putting the fact that someone has a secret worth killing for on display makes it ever more likely that the killer will strike again -- this time at Alex. Sue Stone

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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

Wealthy donors have gathered in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's glorious Temple of Dendur to celebrate a controversial new exhibit. An uneasy mix of scholarship, showbiz, and aggressive marketing, "A Modern Bestiary" has raised fierce opposition from some of New York's museum elite.

Assistant D.A. Alex Cooper observes the developing tensions with bemused interest until Met director Pierre Thibodaux pulls her aside. 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.

Alex must explore behind the scenes at the elegant but severe Metropolitan, travel uptown to the remote setting of the Cloisters, 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 procedural authenticity, The Bone Vault is a tour de force from one of crime writing's brightest stars.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Los Angeles Times

The real stars are the museums themselves, with their shadowy miles of halls, stairs, vaults, crannies; their icono-, paleo-, archeo-, techno- and anthro- holdings in the millions; their swarms of personnel; their endless invitations to criminal grand guignol. That's where Alex and the NYPD hunt the killer and solve a chilling puzzle Fairstein has contrived for us. — Eugen Weber

Publishers Weekly

Fairstein's 25-year stint as head of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan DA's office once again makes for an authoritative and fact-filled mystery (her fifth after The Deadhouse) featuring alter-ego assistant DA Alexandra Cooper. "Coop" is an attractive workaholic in her 30s, ambivalent about her current relationship with an always-on-the-road NBC correspondent. While she's attending a reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, new Met director Pierre Thibodaux pulls her aside and asks for help with a recent crisis: a customs security dog found that a Met sarcophagus ready for shipment back to Cairo contained the corpse of a young female researcher from the Cloisters, the Met's medieval branch. Coop calls her usual NYPD sidekick detectives, brash Mike Chapman and burly Mercer Wallace, and the trio sets out to search among the museum's bookish staff and rich benefactors for a killer with a motive. In the meantime, Coop and Chapman, who should be a couple but don't know it yet, lecture one another on ancient history and contemporary law, and place bets on Jeopardy questions. Readers also learn about such subjects as Inuit funeral rituals, the average growth rate for human hair, the habits of stalkers and rapists and modern techniques of sadomasochism. Fairstein has a heavy-handed way of working this information into the dialogue, and the plot resolution strains credibility. Yet the quick-witted Cooper is as likable as ever, and fans of Fairstein's other books will find this satisfying-if not standout-fare. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Fairstein returns with another thriller starring popular protagonist Alexandra Cooper (Deadhouse), a Manhattan assistant district attorney. This time out, she and her sidekick, cop Mike Chapman, are drawn into a particularly mysterious case: a Metropolitan Museum of Art intern is found dead in a sarcophagus, and though she's been dead for months, her body is perfectly preserved. When it is discovered that she died of arsenic poisoning, the plot thickens. This is fun reading; Fairstein's fast pacing, colorful suspects, and museum settings (the Museum of Natural History is also featured) make her book reminiscent of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Relic. Alex is, however, a weak point; she's just as fastidious and stilted here as she was in previous outings. Her relationship with pretty-boy newscaster Jake, her flashy L.A. entertainment lawyer best friend, and private jet rides to her vacation home in Martha's Vineyard combine to make her a poster girl for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Fairstein has already had some success with this series; if she imbues Alex with more depth, she'll have a real winner. Despite that flaw, this is recommended for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/02.]-Rebecca House Stankowski, Purdue Univ. Calumet Lib., Hammond, IN Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A gala reception at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is interrupted by the news that one of the museum's sarcophagi has turned up in a Newark freight yard with its mummified Middle Kingdom princess replaced by a much more recent corpse. Even before her boss, New York DA Paul Battaglia, has won his fight for jurisdiction over the remains of Katrina Grooten-a Cloisters intern who'd supposedly returned home to South Africa months ago-ADA Alexandra Cooper, head of Manhattan's sex crimes unit, has swung into action. Together with an old friend, homicide dick Mike Chapman, she traces Katrina to the Met's great sister, the Museum of Natural History, where, as at its rival and twin across Central Park, "most of what you see has been stolen from beneath someone's nose." The treasures locked away in both museums are so vast, and the Natural History Museum so honeycombed with unexplored corridors and storage rooms sealed years ago on the orders of demanding benefactors, that a lengthy investigation-interrupted by the highly experienced 14-year-old who cries rape and the S&M couple who insists that what he's doing to her is safe, sane, and consensual, is guaranteed. But it will take the revelations of an elusive friend of Katrina's to explain why the doomed girl traded her devotion to medieval art for an activist role in cultural anthropology-a career change that cost her life. Despite the Cornwellesque title, the fearless plunge into the dirty waters of museum politics suggests that Fairstein (The Deadhouse, 2001, etc.) may have found her own voice at last.