Linda Fairstein delivered "a beguiling mix of murder, romance, and suspense" (Los Angeles Times) in her powerful New York Times bestseller The Deadhouse. Now, her acclaimed heroine, Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper, heads up a spellbinding investigation deep inside New York City's most magnificent and mysterious institutions.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exquisite Temple of Dendur, a monument to an ancient world, a very modern debate is raging at a gala dinner: a controversial new exhibit -- a mix of preeminent art scholarship and high-tech commercialism -- is fiercely opposed by many among the upper echelon of museum donors. Alex Cooper steps into this highly charged ring of power players only to make a much more troubling discovery: a young museum researcher has been murdered, her body shipped to the Met in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Together with cops Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex must penetrate the realm of the city's cultural elite to find a killer intent on keeping some secrets buried for eternity.