Lethal Legacy (Alexandra Cooper Series #11) » (Reprint)

Hailed by Patricia Cornwell as "one of the most promising forces in crime fiction," former head of the Manhattan District Attorney's Sex Crimes Unit Linda Fairstein has hooked readers with her intense mystery series featuring assistant D.A. -- and Fairstein's alter ego -- Alex Cooper.

In Linda Fairstein s outstanding new novel, the New York Public Library houses dazzling treasures and deadly secrets.

When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr s apartment on Manhattan s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors.

Eventually Alex connects their internal family rivalries to a priceless edition of Alice in Wonderland, which also contains the world s oldest map. Would one of the well-bred Hunts be willing to kill for the treasures?...

The Washington Post - Kevin Allman

What makes Lethal Legacy one of Linda Fairstein's stronger offerings is the intriguing setting: the catacombs beneath the New York Public Library. It also helps that the author downplays the unrealistic girlie-girl aspects of Cooper's life…in favor of a heightened focus on the mystery and its mix of high society, rare maps, library crimes and literary restoration. Fairstein presents the latter, interestingly and in great detail, as just another form of forensic science.