Book Review #2

A few days ago I finished a book: The Bone Vault, a murder mystery by Linda Fairstein. I've never read any of her work before and picked up this book on a whim as I was passing the mystery novels at the library. It's not high-brow literature in the class of Nabokov, but it's a darned entertaining read.

Ms. Fairstein is a lawyer and worked for 25 years as a prosecutor of crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence. The main character in the book, Alexandra Cooper, has a similar job. The medical, forensic and police aspects of the book are well-researched and well-written, obviously because the author has an intimate knowledge of these subjects.

In the book, a body is discovered in a sarcophagus being shipped overseas from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Much of the book takes place in the Met or the American Museum of Natural History, both in New York City. This book encompasses a range of my interests: medical/forensic, art/museums, and a good murder mystery. The descriptions of the museums and their contents are fascinating, leaving me with a great desire to travel to New York and explore them for myself. The ending, while it neatly solves the murder and ties up the loose ends, didn't leave me feeling disappointed the way some murder mysteries do. (The Deus ex Machina-style endings wear thin after awhile, with the murderer voluntarily confessing and revealing details that weren't included earlier in the book.)

I would recommend this book, and I've also borrowed another of Ms. Fairstein's novels from the library. Any author that entices me to read more of his/her work deserves a recommendation in my opinion.