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 of Alice 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.