Rex’s reviews of anything (but mostly books)

Strange as it may seem, murders are a lot more common in the world-famous landmarks of the Big Apple than they are in the gritty streets of the South Bronx. Of course, that’s only if you’re reading the novels of Linda Fairstein’s Alex Cooper series; in which the dynamic DA seems to invariably discover a corpse in the bowels of MOMA, the Met, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, or the Museum of Natural History. Apparently, people are dropping like flies against the backdrop of New York’s high culture scene… not unlike Margaret Roosevelt’s Washington, D. C., I suppose…

Alex’s Adventures in Cultureland continue in 2009’s Lethal Legacy, with a veritable blood trail leading past Patience and Fortitude – the brooding brace of statues who may guard the gates of culture, but apparently don’t function as watch lions. Yep, that’s right: homicide rears its ugly head within the cloistered halls of The New York Public Library. It’s a murder mystery of which one can safely quip, “This is one for the books.”

Tina Barr turned up dead in the park behind the NYPL, her corpse oddly chilly and bearing an ear-to-ear smile a couple of inches below her chin. Cryptic clues include a NYPL call slip in the late rare-book conservator’s pocket and a second body in her apartment. That second body lay atop a jewel-encrusted copy of the first book printed in North America, a prize worth – at a guess – a gazillion dollars or so. More to the point, however, is the pile of books found stashed in one of the vast library’s many garrets, a pile containing a hidden section of a map that – if complete – would be the rarest and most costly map on earth. And the librarians didn’t even know it was in their collection…

Alex’s usual posse – Mike and Mercer – are hot on the trail of… of… of whomever caused the deaths of the two women. Prime suspects include the “world’s greatest map thief” (or his brother, one’s not certain) and a host of very well-to-do society swells. After all, the great map is rumored to be the final legacy of one of the richest families in Manhattan, though the Hunts are far more likely to squabble among themselves than with the Astors and Trumps. Expect the usual deadly showdown between Alex and the surprise villain(s), somewhere in one or another of NYC’s best-known landmarks, and you’ll not be disappointed – at least with your expectations.
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It’d been five years; five years of relative quiet, relative peace. Jane Whitefield was even beginning to think she could keep the promise she’d made to her surgeon husband on their wedding day; think the life she’d left behind was gone for good. That was before a bomb went off at the local hospital. That was before Jane saw the very young, very scared, very pregnant young woman who’d come looking for her – a Runner. That was before Jane realized she had to become a guide once more to make Christine Monahan disappear. The hunters from San Diego had other ideas – they planned to return Christine to the father of her unborn child, and they were the sort of people who had no qualms about setting off a bomb in a hospital to catch their prey.

Jane did her thing and got Christine out of Buffalo to… an undisclosed location; in the process reducing the number of hunters from six to four. The temporary identity and wad of cash she’d provided Christine would last until the baby was old enough to travel, when Jane would return to move them to safety. Or so she thought; but when she returned Christine’s apartment was empty and the food in her ‘fridge was past the sell-by date.

California, here she comes…
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Oscar Bane may be small, but he has a big attitude. Found by the NYPD cradling the nude, lifeless body of his girlfriend, Terri Bridges, Bane cooperates even to the point of admitting himself to the prison ward at Bellevue. There, he consents to both psychological and physical examinations, but here’s where the attitude comes in: he consents only if a pair of famous doctors perform the exams: former FBI profiler Benton Wesley and his wife, CNN consultant Kay Scarpetta, MD. Wife? When did that happen?

Scarpetta’s immediately plunged into an ethical quandary: her examination shows that Bane’s injuries, which he claims were suffered at the hands of the murderer, were in fact self-inflicted; as his physician, however, she is bound by confidentiality. Further muddying the waters is a request by SuperAssistant DA Jaime Berger that Wesley and Scarpetta consult on the murder, for it’s become apparent that Bridges is not this killer’s first victim.

The other pieces of Scarpetta’s personal puzzle fall into place as well: her niece Lucy has set up shop in the city as a forensic computer expert; former Scarpetta investigator Marino is working for Berger, priming the two for what could be one of the most awkward reunions in literary history. Playing in the background all the while is the mysterious “Gotham Gotcha” gossip blog, which has lately spent all its energy heaping shame and scorn on Scarpetta.
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Old-time reporters feared and detested the spike. As a noun it represented a sharpened metal rod set so that it jutted upward from a desk like a particularly evil skyscraper. As a verb, it was no less evil, at least to reporters: to spike meant the editor had killed a story, thereby preventing its publication. Some might have found it fitting, then, that New York Globe’s assistant managing editor Charles Ratnoff had been found with one of those old-timey spindles hammered into his chest. Killed. Dead. Murdered. Spiked, even.

Jude Hurley drew the assignment of covering the murder that took place but a few yards from his desk; the kind of assignment that might well make (or break) his career. Sure, he had the city editor breathing down his neck every time he turned around, but at least he could do a lot of legwork without even getting up from his desk chair. Well, he could up until The Avenger (as the killer styled himself) struck again, once more within the Globe family. A serial killer working inside a publication: how… fitting.

All was not fun and games at The Globe in those halcyon days: up on the top floor in a paneled boardroom decorated with the photos of long-dead luminaries, publisher Elisha Hagenbuckle was already trying to fend off a palace coup. Readership was down as subscribers fled to the internet, and employees were either dying like flies or calling in sick – and when they were on the job, the political backstabbing was almost as deadly as the real thing. If The Avenger’s real intended victim was The Globe itself, he was doing a bang-up job. With Jude the no-longer so Obscure on the story, though – and with the leggy cop/chanteuse Priscilla Bollingsworth, who had some interesting moves of her own, heading up the NYPD’s investigation, we just might have expected to hear that famous shout at any moment:

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