Product Description

The third in Linda Fairstein's gripping and authentic series of crime novels featuring Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper. With aplomb, style and sharp compassion for her 'clients' Coop again unravels the truth behind murder in partnership with homicide detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace. The victim is Deni Caxton, third wife to the heir of a steel baron and a leading New York art dealer in her own right. As Coop, Chapman and Mercer investigate her brutal killing they strip away the elegant and refined facade of her marriage and the international art world to reveal a tangle of cut-throat business dealings, over blown egos and distorted passions. They find that the rich have the same motives for murder as the poorest killer - money, revenge, love and hate - and they rapidly discover that a veneer of artistic 'civilisation' doesn't prevent the use of blackmail or violence, not even when officers of the law stand in the way.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92507 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
When Linda Fairstein describes the route which Alexandra Cooper takes from the District Attorney's office to NYPD headquarters you know she's walked that way many times herself. "I took the shortcut over to One Police Plaza, cutting behind the Metropolitan Correctional Center and alongside the staggeringly expensive new federal courthouse, which made our digs, complete with oversized rodents and roaches that obviously thrived on Combat, look like judicial facilities in some third world country".

Like her fictional counterpart Fairstein is a Manhattan assistant district attorney in charge of a sex crimes unit. As in Final Jeopardy and Likely to Die Fairstein surrounds her somewhat unlikely heroine (a beautiful 35-year-old blonde with an Ivy League education, a house in Martha's Vineyard and an affection for betting on quiz show answers at cop bars) with a wealth of procedural detail. The "cold hit" of the title, for example, refers to a computer match between DNA samples left by a rapist in a recent case with evidence from an older crime.

With her trusty cop sidekicks Mike Chapman (who eats everything in sight and drops wisecracks like crumbs) and Mercer Wallace (who is big and can take a bullet meant for Alex without flinching) Cooper is working on two major cases--a serial rapist who has suddenly decided to come out of hiding and a couple of murders linked to the nasty underground world of fine art sales. But she also has time to give her fellow sex crime prosecutors advice on how to handle everything from a man shooting videos up women's skirts at a Star Trek convention to a guy who takes his love for racehorses well past the legal limits. Once again the entertainment value is very high. --Dick Adler

Review
'If it is authenticity you demand, Final Jeopardy has got it in spades...Fairstein delivers the other ingredients, too: engaging characters, an intelligent story full of twists and terrific tension' Marcel Berlins, The Times

About the Author
Linda Fairstein is Assistant DA in the Sex Crimes Division in New York City. She is married to the lawyer Justin Feldman.

Customer Reviews

Excellent, reminiscent of early Cornwell
I picked this book up purely from the Cornwell quote on the front cover. Being a huge fan of the early Scarpetta novels - they have gone a bit downhill since 'Cruel & Unusual' - in my opinion, I would recommend this to anyone of similar taste. First class plot, excellent characters, very similar in fact to the Scarpetta/Marino partnership. What made this book stand out was it's freshness. The latest Scrapetta left me, well, bored to be honest - This on the otherhand left me excited about Ms Coopers next adventure.

A good thriller
I read this book after having read the first book of the series "Final Jeopardy". Having loved the first one I was a bit dissapointed by this one which is the third in the Alex Cooper series. The plot did not run as smoothly as in "Final Jeopardy" and the characters were a bit on the thin side. Another thing which I had much appreciated in the first book were the real life prosecutor stories which accompanied the plot; these lacked of consistency as well as the rest of the story. Overall it is still a fairly good thriller.

Linda Fairstein
American to the core, Linda is obviously a modern historian and includes the history of New York in her stories, introduced in the most subtle and interesting ways and always relative to the plot. Makes good reading.