As a former Assistant DA Linda Fairstein knows her stuff and writes convincingly well about police procedural but in this novel we also get a look at the depths of the New York Public Library with its rare fist editions and hidden rooms. All in all a fascinating and suspenseful thriller.
When Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr's apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, she finds a neighbour convinced that the young woman has been assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, denies that and refuses to co-operate with Alex and the police investigators. Tina disappears, and then another woman is found murdered in the same apartment, with an extremely valuable book at her side. The book has probably been stolen, but from whom and how? Pursuing the murderer Alex is drawn into the strange and privileged world of rich and secretive book collectors, where avarice and greed is as strong an inheritance as wealth..
In a beguiling mix and history and suspense Linda Fairstein takes readers on a breath-taking ride through collections of beautiful first editions, supposedly 'lost' atlases, and deep into the hidden rooms and tunnels of the great New York Public Library.
Linda Fairstein was the Assistant DA of Manhattan's sex crimes unit before taking early retirement in 2002 to concentrate on her writing. She divides her time between New York and Martha's Vineyard.
