CATEGORY

Series heroine Alexandra Cooper, head of Manhattan's sex crimes unit, returns in a novel that might have been titled "Nevermore,": focused as it is on the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe. When the body of a two-decades-old skeleton is found bricked up behind a wall in a soon-to-be-demolished building where Poe once lived, it looks like a very cold case indeed. But then that old murder is linked to a more current slaying, one that at first looks like the work of the Silk Stocking Rapist, Alex's old enemy, who terrorized the upper East Side of Manhattan several years ago but hasn't been heard from since. As usual, Alex and her good friends, detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman, take the reader to an area of New York most tourists never see--in this case, the Bronx Botanical Gardens and its wild, forested environs--and bring it dramatically to life. Just in case Poe ever has his own category on Alex's favorite TV show, there's enough trivia included about the master of the macabre's life and work to propel any reader to Final Jeopardy. Entombed is a smart, stylish, well-told tale. --Jane Adams