Lethal Legacy (Random House Large Print) - Softcover

Fairstein, Linda A.

3.8

4,596 ratings by Goodreads

9780739327708: Lethal Legacy (Random House Large Print)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0739327704 ISBN 13: 9780739327708

Publisher: Random House Large Print, 2009

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In Linda Fairstein’s outstanding new novel, the New York Public Library houses dazzling treasures—and deadly secrets.

When Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper is summoned to Tina Barr’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she finds a neighbor convinced that the young woman was assaulted. But the terrified victim, a conservator of rare books and maps, refuses to cooperate with investigators. Then another woman is found murdered in that same apartment with an extremely valuable book, believed to have been stolen. As Alex pursues the murderer, she is drawn into the strange and privileged world of the Hunt family, major benefactors of the New York Public Library and passionate rare book collectors.

Eventually Alex connects their internal family rivalries to a priceless edition ofAlice in Wonderland, which also contains the world’s oldest map. Would one of the well-bred Hunts be willing to kill for the treasures? The search for the answer takes Alex and her team on a breathtaking chase from Manhattan’s grandest apartments to the secret tunnels and chambers of the New York Public Library, and finally to a nineteenth-century underground vault. There, in the pitch-black darkness, Alex comes face-to-face with the killer who values money more than life.

Featuring a cast of elite, erudite, and downright eccentric characters, and a complex trail of clues that will have you guessing until the final pages,Lethal Legacy is Linda Fairstein’s most beguiling thriller yet.

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Review:

Linda Fairstein established her reputation as one of the most famous prosecutors in the sex crime field in the USA before changing careers and becoming a writer of crime fiction -- a career shift she has managed to bring off with some aplomb. As a prosecutor, she famously made use of the new developments in the use of DNA evidence to nail sex offenders, and was also instrumental in fighting the routine exposure of the sexual histories of rape victims in court.

It has to be said that she has done nothing as radical in her new career, but she has undoubtedly carved out a name for herself as one of the most surefooted purveyors of the crime novel, with such luminaries as Harlan Coben and Kathy Reichs lining up to praise her. Lethal Legacy, despite its unimaginatively alliterative title, is one of her most accomplished books.

New York's Upper East Side; the police are summoned to the scene of an assault, and detective Mike Chapman is present, along with Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper. A woman named Tina Barr is, it seems, the victim of an attack, but withholds cooperation from the police. A day passes, and Chapman and Cooper find themselves returning to the same building to deal with a savage murder -- a woman has been brutally battered to death, with a book beside her; the jacket of the book is embossed with diamonds. But the woman is not the individual the detectives (and the reader) might expect her to be, Tina Barr. Tina has vanished. The detectives discover that the book is part of an expensive collection at the New York Public Library, and as the duo dig deeper into the mystery behind the murder, they come up against the wall of influence and untouchability that is the province of the hyper-rich.

While some of this material may seem familiar, there is no gainsaying Linda Fairstein’s hard-won expertise in the field of the unputdownable crime novel. She matches expert police procedural mechanics with some nicely drawn characterisation, notably of her beleaguered hero and heroine. It looks like Harlan Coben and Kathy Reichs will have to be rolling out those endorsements once again. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

A nifty mystery that starts off as a harrowing missing-person-homicide case, but blossoms into something far deeper. Lethal Legacy is great-my personal favorite in this bestselling series (Harlan Coben)

[The characters'] adventures are reminiscent of the quests of Indiana Jones or National Treasure. Bibliophiles and Fairstein fans are in for a treat (Library Journal)

Fascinating...curiosity picqued, readers will surely want to find out more (Booklist)

Entertaining.... Full of fun information about the NYPL (Publishers Weekly)

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