«New York Times» bestselling author Linda Fairstein is at her explosive best as she plunges into the byzantine world of New York City's most powerful and sacred institutions — and unearths the most sinister of secrets... Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper has been called to a Harlem Baptist Church, where a woman has been decapitated and set on fire on the church steps — with the imprint of a Star of David necklace seared into her flesh. Then a second body is found at a cathedral in Little Italy. Alex is blind to the sick and inconceivable motives feeding a particularly vicious serial killer — until she mines the depths of the city's vast and serpentine religious history. What Alex follows is a dangerous path that takes her far beyond the scope of her investigation, and directly into the path of a frightening and inescapable truth.»

When the burnt headless body of a young woman is found on the steps of a Baptist Church in Harlem, Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper is one of the first on the shocking scene. Alex has seen some gruesome crimes committed in New York, but the barbarity of this latest discovery leaves her nauseous. With NYPD cop Mike Chapman, Alex begins to investigate, but before long another woman is slaughtered and found on the steps of a Catholic church in Little Italy; her throat slashed and her tongue cut out. It becomes clear there is a zealous serial killer on the loose. Now Alex and Mike must keep one step ahead of a religious fanatic bent on silencing the women he believes are bringing shame to his beliefs ? before he kills anyone else.

Featuring a cast of elite and erudite 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. 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 has been 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.