Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Linda Fairstein's continued rise into the rarefied realm of great crime fiction seems unstoppable. She is beginning to defy gravity. The Bone Vault will spin your head and race you away on a blast of originality, chilling real-world detail, and turbo-charged writing." Patricia Cornwell
Review
"The Bone Vault is nothing short of brilliant witty dialogue, beautiful writing, fascinating locales, superb plot, and a cool cast of characters." Nelson DeMille
Review
"A tour de force. Shivers not only the bones but the marrow." Frances Fyfield
Review
"A page-turning tour into some of the deepest and most mysterious recesses of New York's great museums!" Lisa Scottoline
Synopsis
Matters take a deadly turn when the body of a young museum researcher is found in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, and it's up to Assistant DA Alex Cooper to penetrate New York's exclusive museum society and track down the mysterious killer. Following her international bestseller "The Deadhouse, " Linda Fairstein sets her new novel at the crossroads of big money, high culture, and murder.
About the Author
Linda Fairstein was for twenty-five years America's foremost prosecutor of crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence as head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Recipient of the prestigious Nero Wolfe Award for "literary excellence in the mystery genre" for
The Deadhouse, a
New York Times bestseller, she is also the author of
Final Jeopardy (an ABC Movie of the Week starring Dana Delaney),
Likely to Die, and
Cold Hit, all international bestsellers. Her nonfiction book
Sexual Violence was a
New York Times notable book in 1994. She lives with her husband in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard. Visit Linda Fairstein's Web site at www.lindafairstein.com