Lethal Legacy (Alexandra Cooper) - Hardcover

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