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After an hiatus of four years, the Silk Stocking Rapist has struck again. A foreign student manages to fight him off and is lying in hospital. A blood-stained cigarette butt left at the scene establishes that this man, who strikes on the Upper East Side (the 'Silk Stocking' district of New York) is back in business. That night, Alexandra Cooper, assistant DA in charge of sex crimes, joins three friends for an alumni event at NYU. The meeting is being held in an historic brownstone that will be demolished shortly. Men are working in the cellar, taking down walls, even as the party goes on upstairs. 85 Amity Street had been the home of Edgar Allen Poe in about 1845 or 6, but NYU has prevailed over the preservationists, and is busily destroying another landmark of old New York. A group goes down into the basement to watch, when a skull is seen through a hole in a wall. Alex stops the demolition and calls for back-up. It turns out that the skeleton is that of a young woman who had been sealed in the wall, while alive, about 25 years earlier. Following clues, Cooper and detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman, go up to the former NYU campus in The Bronx, now the home of Bronx Community College. They go to a ceremony honoring Poe in the Hall of Fame, the classical monument on campus, but are shot at. Chapman chases the shooter but to no avail. Another clue leads them to the Bronx Botanical Gardens and also to Poe's Cottage before the rapist is caught. Fairstein is back on track with ENTOMBED. She combines characterization, mystery, and New York history and geography into an elegant story. Those of you who have been disappointed in the last couple of Alex Cooper stories should appreciate this one. And for those of us from The Bronx, it's a trip back.
Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, December 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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