Customer Reviews

The Bone Vault : A Novel

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Spending time with Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman and to learn more about New York City landmarks and institutions is enough of a reason to buy the book. This time it's the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History. When the body of a young intern at the Cloisters is found in a sarcophagus on a ship bound for Egypt, Alex and Mike find the inner workings of the museums, not to mention its many hidden room both fascinating and possibly deadly. An intriguing tale after which one will never look at the institutionalized collection of art and artifacts, including human bones, in quite the same way. It's also a view of why other cultures and countries may not look upon the European/American penchant for "collecting" with quite the reverence that collectors have come to expect. As always Fairstein intersperses other cases that the Sex Unit of the District Attorney's office is investigating. There is also some interesting, but very subtle movement in the relationship between Alex and Mike. Although books rarely cause me to cry, Alex's recounting of the events of September 11 from her viewpoint as well as from Mike's brought tears to my eyes. It's a beautiful and heartrending account that has nothing to do with the story, but fits in beautifully with the novel. It is also a story that I imagine the author had to tell. "The Bone Vault" is a wonderful book that is available this month. Highly recommended for all who enjoy a great story, fully realized characters and fine writing.

In 2002, Linda Fairstein retired from her position as head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office. She is the Real Deal --- a real life prosecutor who can write. She's also blonde and gorgeous. Now go ahead and tell me life is fair!

With each of her five novels since FINAL JEOPARDY (her first), she has displayed an increasingly smooth storytelling style uniquely her own. If her books read a lot like true crime, it's because she knows her material down to the most intimate detail. Fairstein's daily work routine has become the stuff of television legend, via Law & Order, particularly Law & Order: SVU, which stands for the department she originated --- not in fiction but in real life. She has made an enormous contribution to the now-safer streets of New York City and, with her retirement, will certainly be missed. We who like to read are lucky because we now have her full-time attention as a writer.

In her fifth outing with her DA protagonist, Alexandra Cooper, Linda Fairstein takes us into a fascinating behind-the-scenes world at the Metropolitan Museum and its offshoot for medieval art history, The Cloisters, as well as the New York Museum of Natural History. They have been planning a 3-way cooperative exhibit on Beastiaries, Real and Imagined (a fictional exhibit that sounds like such a great idea, I wanted to see it for myself). The victim is a young, promising museum employee of The Cloisters who worked on that exhibit. Her perfectly preserved body is found inside an ancient limestone sarcophagus that was about to be shipped abroad, as part of a large shipment of art on exchange from the Metropolitan. Within 24 hours of the body's discovery, the Met's famous Director has resigned. He claims his resignation has no relationship whatever to the finding of the body but, of course, Alex and her team members, Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, are not so easily convinced.

An autopsy reveals that the victim died of arsenic poisoning and that she had been dead for almost six months. How did the body come to be in such perfect condition after such a long time? More interesting speculations occur when the head of the museum's Egyptian Collection leaves to attend a "mummy congress" in Chile --- it seems he is the world's foremost expert on mummification. And so onward, the story goes.

Linda Fairstein is deadly serious about her concern over crime (sex crimes in particular) and her novels reflect this concern. But THE BONE VAULT is, nevertheless, fun to read. It is no small achievement to be able to write heavy stuff with a light touch, but she has pulled it off for much of the book. If you enjoy going to museums, this will be a treat for you. Even if museums aren't quite your ideal for crime story enrichment, you'll find a lot of other little tidbits that add to the narrative. These tidbits include insight into Alan Dershowitz's Martha's Vineyard beach habits and in what movie you might catch a glimpse of William Shatner's pubic hair ... if you have sharp eyes and are inclined to look.

THE BONE VAULT is Linda Fairstein's best yet.

--- Reviewed by Ava Dianne Day

I picked this book up looking for a quick read and expecting a sort of Da Vinci Code type suspense thriller. I did find a quick read but the novel was no were close to the quality of Da Vinci Code.

Instead, I found a surprisingly fun novel, not just about the Metropolitan Museum but more focused on the Natural History Museum in NYC. While I was expecting another art murder mystery, I found instead learning about the history of the Natural History Museum set admist a murder at the Met.

Fairstein was a quick read and typical of mass produced mystery novels but this one had an edge that I found alluring. I was able to appreciate the novelist's research on the museums as well as her writing abilities. While they might not be Pulitizer Prize winning it was an enjoyable read.

The novel was a little predictable and the killer pretty obvious but I still found it fun and rather enjoyable. A good beach read.

Fairstein once again draws on her own experiences with protagonist Alexandra Cooper, who works as the head of the Sex Crimes Unit of Manhattan D.A.'s Office, a position previously held by the author. A party at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art soon leads to a murder investigation when director Pierre Thibodaux enlists Alex's help to find out why an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, awaiting shipment to Egypt from a New Jersey pier, inexplicably contains the well-preserved remains of a young woman, not an Egyptian princess as presumed, but a twenty-first century woman.

When the photograph of the deceased woman identifies her as Katrina Grooten by Thibodaux's assistant, Cooper and Detective Mike Chapman attempt to discover who would have had access to the sarcophagus in which she was buried and why anyone would have wanted the young museum employee dead. Working at the Cloisters, where the Met housed its medieval art, Katrina was part of a project that included the Museum of Natural History in a joint bestiary exhibit studying ancient monster type beasts.

While the varied descriptions of the museum exhibits and the vastness of the holdings may serve for dry reading, Ms. Fairstein keeps the pace flowing with her study of the interpersonal relationship between Detective Chapman and Alex, in an especially touching reminiscence of the aftermath of September eleventh. Fairstein's first-hand knowledge of the Manhattan D.A.'s office allows her to imbue her main character with realism, as she chronicles Alex's complex and ever expanding caseload. This truly stand out read will have readers reaching for more Alex Cooper novels and eagerly anticipating future ones.

Alexandra Cooper is back in the fifth Linda Fairstein fiction novel, "The Bone Vault." A young woman is found murdered inside of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, but she doesn't bear any obvious signs of violence. Alex, Mike, and Mercer, soon find out that the vicitim's name is Katrina Grooten and she worked for the Cloisters Museum - and that she had been poisoned to death with arsenic. The team also learns that Katrina had been raped just a few months prior to her death. Could her sexual assault be linked to her murder? Or had Katrina stumbled onto information at the museum that no one wanted her to know; information about the bone vault?

I felt like I was reading this novel for 100 years! It had such potential to be an edge of your seat kind of thriller, but Fairstein squashed that potential with her cumbersome writing style. Fairstein needs to remember that she is writing fiction, mystery/thriller fiction, which is supposed to be suspenseful and exciting. Instead, I feel like I am a member of one of her juries she is making a very detailed and explicit presentation to. Liven things up, Linda, or this reader may abandon ship! On the up side, no one tried to murder Alex in this novel, which is definitely a plus.

After Deadhouse, I didn't rush to pick up The Bone Vault . However, I was delightfully surprised. Fans of Fairstein will enjoy another romp with her heroine, Alexandra Cooper, and supporting cast of police officers.

New York's Metropolitan and Natural History museums have planned a joint exhibit "The Bestiary," featuring depictions of animals in medieval art and artifacts. While they are setting up the exhibit, the body of a young South African intern is discovered in an Egyptian tomb.

Who was this intern and why was she murdered? That's the main plot of the book and we have plenty of detours for special cases of Cooper's Sex Crimes unit.

As other readers have noted, the book isn't especially scary, despite a short "trapped" scene near the end, even when the characters prowl around deserted museum floors after dark. However, there IS suspense, created by our search for the intern's history. And we do learn an awful lot about how skeletons and other remains have been placed in museums. If the book is accurate, there's been a callous disregard for ancestors of people who care very much about honoring the dead.

While terror may be missing, there's an abundance of likeable characters, including a young woman who flies from London to help the investigation. We learn a lot about museums and museum politics. I'll never view the Met the same way again.

I had trouble putting the book down -- a happy, rare event these days -- but the ending was a little disappointing. If we were given clues ahead of time, I didn't detect them.

And I have to agree with Alexandra's friend who warns that Jake, Alex's current boyfriend, isn't right for her. It's obvious the author has trouble making Jake, the international journalist, come alive on the pages, and soon he'll be gone.

Will Alexandra become romantically involved with her cop friend, Mike? Perhaps after his current love dies tragically?
I hope not. We need to maintain the tensions of their friendship.

And Alexandra remains an attractive thirty-six years old. She's far too wise for that age -- only ten years out of law school -- and she needs some long-term goals, both career and personal. A 36-year-old whiz kid won't stay in that job forever.

Lots of interesting details about what goes on behind the scenes at the Metropolitan & the Natural History Museum, but a really weak mystery plotline. _NO_ knowledge of Africa at all, just New York PC views. They're two different things. Willem van der Post's death is pure Hollywood -- anyone with any knowledge of Africa would just burst out laughing. The author also knows nothing about Continental names. 'Van der' is Dutch & any name which contains it is perfectly ordinary. 'Von' is Austrian & is always part of an aristocratic name. Also note that 'van der Post' would be listed under 'P', _not_ 'v'. I mention this because it's a significant point in the plot at the end. But this is a book written by an American for fellow-Americans.

I love Fairstein's books and I literally couldn't put this latest one down. She has a knack for taking great New York institutions and landmarks and revealing the history and mystery behind them in an inventive way. The research is meticulous, the plot zings along, and, as always, Alex Cooper and her cohorts are great company. The Museum of Natural History is Fairstein's prime target this time, but there are fascinating tidbits about The Metropolitan Museum and the Cloisters. Reading about the hidden rooms, the storage spaces with extraordinary collections, not to mention what once went on in these places under the guise of scholarship, I just thought: Wow.

"The Bone Vault" is by far the worst of the heretofore uneven but still enjoyable Alexandra Cooper series.

I found myself annoyed almost from the first page, but because I have been such a huge fan of Linda Fairstein, I kept on going. And going. And going. It felt like the book grew a chapter or two every day, it was that difficult to plough through.

The main plot (and there are several confusing subplots as well) concerns the discovery of a young woman's amazingly well preserved body in a sarcophagus belonging to the Natural History Museum in New York. Or it is the Met? The description of the museums, their histories, their methods of operation, their hidden labyrinthian nooks and crannies, and above all, their rivalries, was somewhat interesting for a while, but halfway into the book, I no longer cared if I ever set foot in a museum again, New York's or otherwise.

At any rate, while investigating this murder, Alex and her cohorts, Chapman and Mercer, uncover a lot more than they bargained for. Surprise, surprise. There are plenty of loose ends that are never discussed again...but lucky us, we also get a highly annoying visit to Martha's Vineyard again, for another "girls' weekend out" at Alex's beach house, so we can all feel bad that we are not rich enough to enjoy same--from the perfect food, to the masseuse-for-three, to the luxe accommodations.

But what really sent me around the bend was the sidetrack into a soliloquy about September 11. With all due respect for the author's very real feelings about this event, the rest of America has them too. Somehow, the way she described her own real horror (and I certainly do not question her feelings or degrade them in any way), she managed to convey that she and others in her immediate circle were somehow more privy to the grief and horror of that day. I found it gratuitous, and it made me very angry. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, even peripherally, and it rubbed me very much the wrong way.

The plot finally wends its weary way to the end, and not a moment too soon, as this reader would willingly have taken the body's place in the sarcophagus just to get away from a character who has become a parody of herself.

Perhaps it's time for Fairstein to give Alex Cooper et al. a rest?

I lasted only one-third the way through this boring book. It has pages and pages of irrelevant dull dialog and detailed descriptions of what clothes the women wear. The part I read contained no sex, no violence, and no graphic murder. The plot is so farfetched and improbable that it is totally incredible. I loved Prey, The Last Jihad, and Dead Aim, but The Bone Vault is a book I could and did put down.