The Bone Vault (Alexandra Cooper Series #5) » (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 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 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.

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