Entombed: a novel by Linda Fairstein

Edgar Allan Poe lives, September 24, 2005*****


This is the second novel by Linda Fairstein I have read. This one is exceptionally well plotted and written.The two main plots and various subplots, while at first disparate, are neatly interwoven by the author leading to a chilling denouement. Edgar Allan Poe looms large in this novel.The discovery of the skeleton of a woman entombed behind a brick wall in a house Poe lived in a century before sets Alex Cooper and her colleagues Mercer and Mike off on a chase through sites in New York which I have never encountered in other novels. Meanwhile they are also trying to solve the case of the reappearance of the Silk Stocking Rapist in New York's Upper East Side and a murder apparently committed by this rapist. Ultimately the cases turn out to be linked and are solved with great ingenuity by Alex and her colleagues.