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BONE VAULT, THE
by Linda Fairstein
Scribner, January 2003
384 pages
$25.00
ISBN: 0743223543


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Alexandra Cooper is a hands-on assistant District Attorney. She is in charge of the sex crimes division and has to juggle many different cases as well as deal with jealousy and backbiting from some of the other ADAs.

This night she is off duty attending a cocktail party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. There director approaches and requests her assistance on a problem. The Met often sends art works to other museums around the world on loan. A shipment, ready to go out, had been stopped by a Customs dog very unhappy about one of the items. It was a sarcophagus and inside the security people discovered a dead body much newer than the mummy who should have been there.

After some sleight-of-hand to get the case and the body out of New Jersey where officially it had been discovered and back to New York City, Alex and investigator Mike Chapman begin their probe. Although she has to juggle several other cases as well, Alex gives this one her full attention. One of the odd things was that the body was uncorrupted which meant it had to have been stored under very specific conditions. Imagine trying to find a spot where a body could have been kept in the huge complex of buildings that make up the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Natural History Museum. Nooks, crannies, whole wings have not been examined for years. Modern technology gives some help however to the investigators.

One of the fascinations of this book is the chance the reader gets to imagine these two museums and visit them behind the scenes. There is a wealth of facts and information, some current knowledge, some quite arcane, but all extremely interesting. We get tidbits about the founding of the museums, the original purposes and how these purposes have changed as we have changed, what the museums possess that is not on show for the visitors to see. Behind the scenes in dusty and dim rooms are specimens and objects we might never imagine and we get to prowl around with Alex seeing some of this. This is so well described I could almost smell the dust and the faint hint of formaldehyde.

This is the first mystery I have read that confronts the fact of September 11 head on. Many writers allude to it and I have heard some say they are not yet comfortable discussing it. I can understand that. But Fairstein does not glide around it obliquely. She talks about what Alex was doing on that day and how she is dealing with the pain, the suffering, the loss. It helped this non-New Yorker have a little better sense of how people coped.

The is an excellent police procedural. While reading about sidelights as Alex goes off duty (as everyone must from time to time), mostly we concentrate on the puzzle. Alex and Mike must put this jigsaw together piece by tiny piece. As things begin to fall into place, motives and possibilities become clearer. It is fascinating to follow the police as they use all sorts of investigative processes to uncover evidence. It still takes the human brain, however, to process all of this and understand what it means.

This was truly a delightful trip to two wonderful museums in New York City. Behind the scenes we see the bureaucracy, the jealousies, the backbiting on the highest levels of the system. But more importantly we see how the museums operate and learn many many things we did not know about a truly fascinating institution. For that alone I would recommend this book.

But of course it has more: a puzzle, the investigation, the police procedural, suspense, and an ending I had not guessed at.

Reviewed by Sally A. Fellows, February 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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