Part of Alexandra Cooper, book 7
First published 2006
Sex crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper investigates a bizarre discovery in Manhattan. Construction workers tearing down a brownstone where Edgar Allan Poe once lived find a human skeleton standing upright behind a brick wall. The scene mirrors Poe's fiction, but forensics reveal the woman died recently, not in the 19th century. Cooper faces a second crisis when the Silk Stocking Rapist returns to terrorize the Upper East Side. The attacks turn deadly, leading Cooper and detectives Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman to the Bronx Botanical Gardens. There they encounter the Raven Society, a group obsessed with Poe's work, overseen by a mysterious librarian. Cooper must decode connections between Poe's troubled biography and the present-day murders. She confronts a calculating killer who uses the author's dark imagination as inspiration for real violence.
Genres: mystery, crime, thriller, detective
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: amateur-detective, enemies-to-lovers, serial-killer
Setting: Bronx Botanical Gardens, Manhattan, Upper East Side
Period: 19th Century, Present Day
528 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Pocket Star
Content warnings: murder, violence