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Title: The Bone Vault by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0-7434-3667-9 Publisher: Pocket Star Pub. Date: 30 December, 2003 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: spin your head and race you away
Comment: The glitzy reception at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art should have been a welcome evening off for Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper. But the announcement of a cooperative exhibition with the American Museum of Natural History is overshadowed by a 'gruesome discovery: in an ancient sarcophagus bound for a show abroad, customs officials have found the body of a young woman.
Katrina Grooten was a quiet, studious, hard-working intern at the Cloisters, the magnificent but foreboding home of the Museum's collection of medieval art. According to its records, Katrina had left her job several months earlier to return to her native South Africa: her eerily preserved body is grisly proof she'd never made it home. And the, whi lines on her fingernails are the telltale sign of her killer's modus operandi: arsenic poisoning.
But why would anyone want Katrina dead? As Alex and NYPD Detective Mike Chapman begin their investigations, they encounter an establishment whose culture is as curious as the exhibits they display, and whose secrets and rivalries are as ancient. And then, in the depths of the museum, they discover a number of mysterious vaults, whose bones hold the clues to Katrina's murder. . .
Rating: 5
Summary: The Mummy's Bones Aren't Old Enough
Comment: Alex Cooper is a New York Assistant District Attorney, heading the sex crimes unit, who is used to dealing with society's low lifes. She often works with NYPD detective Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, who is a hostage specialist. Chapman is quick tempered and doesn't suffer fools well, but he's one heck of a detective.
New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is holding a reception to celebrate a forthcoming exhibition in association with the American Museum of Natural History, when customs officials announce that they have found the body of a young woman in a sarcophagus that previously had held the mummified body of an Egyptian princess.
The body is that of Katrina Grooten, a young museum researcher. She'd quit her job months earlier to return to her home in South Africa, but obviously she never made it. The sarcophagus was part of a museum exchange and was about to be shipped off to a museum in Cairo.
As it turns out Grooten had been poisoned with arsenic and because the musem uses a lot of it, everyone is suspect. As Cooper and Chapman investigate they learn that there are petty jealousies even in a stuffy museum and they get a first hand look at the murderous world of New York art. The search for clues in the spooky acres of underground warehouses is fascinating and chilling - bottles of bugs and barrels of bones - in addition to contacts with a host of museum workers who work in a rather dark and dreary place.
"The Bone Vault" is a page-turner that will give you a look at the daily lives of those who work in our museums as it builds it's tension, page by page. Also the closed atmosphere of the museum gives the story an old-fashioned air, sort of like watching a Charlie Chan mystery. The killer is in the house, but who is it? Highly recommended.
Rating: 2
Summary: An interesting disappointment
Comment: "The Bone Vault" could have been a swell 250-page mystery. Unfortunately, it's a 500-page stew of red herrings, dead-end subplots and research, research, research.
This was my first time reading Linda Fairstein, so for all I know all of her books are like this, but "The Bone Vault" just seemed overstuffed. I'm sure Fairstein wanted to paint a realistic portrait of the hectic, never-ending schedule of a sex-crimes prosecutor. That is admirable, and much of it kept me turning the pages, but she just keeps piling it on. There's a stalker, backstabbing co-workers, a lying teen, an S&M tape, a weekend in Martha's Vineyard, reflections on Sept. 11 and various romantic yearnings. Yet none of it has anything to do with the main mystery at hand.
Speaking of the mystery, it didn't make much of an impression. Murder among the secret lairs of Manhattan's finest museums is an interesting concept, one that drew me to the book in the first place. And Fairstein obviously did a great deal of research, cramming the book with facts, tidbits and history until it's bursting at the binding. Even worse, most of it is relayed through clunky dialogue and exposition in the form of museum tours the characters take. Some of it is interesting, but a lot of it is as dry as a, well, bone.
Unfortunately, all of it manages to bury the mystery in historical dust and subplot rubble. The suspects are interchangeable, with blank characterizations and hazy motives. The suspense level hums along at relatively low wattage. And with all the frantic goings-on before it, the climax is disappointing.
Still, I liked Alex Cooper and her rapport with cop Mike Chapman. I liked learning new things about the museums I had spent so many hours roaming. And I even liked the breakneck pace of a majority of the subplots. Had it been assembled with more skill and judicious editing, "The Bone Vault" could have been a fascinating read. But there's too much fat on the bones, and the book ends up being an interesting disappointment.
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Title: The Deadhouse by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0671019546 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 31 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Final Jeopardy by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0671010123 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Cold Hit by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0671019554 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 03 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Likely to Die by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0671014935 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: The Kills by Linda Fairstein ISBN: 0743223551 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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