Product Description

Lola Dakota had to call in the police several times to restrain her abusive husband, but he always returned, so when they got wind of his plan to hire a hitman to kill her she agrees to play her part in the sting which would see both men arrested. It proves to be a great success, but several hours later and when her husband is under lock and key, Lola is truly dead -and by someone's hand. The police team on the original sting are in disarray, so Alex Cooper and Mike Chapman are swiftly in place to take over. Looking beyond her husband into her professional life, they discover a university department riddled with jealousies, extra-marital affairs, swindled funds and the unexplained disappearance of a student known to be a drug user. The one thing which seems to link all the players with all the misdemeanours is the university's research site on an island off Manhattan where they were investigating the remains of the Victorian isolation hospitals and lunatic asylums and the morgue - the deadhouse. But why Lola's murder is connected to the place is not so easy to prove, nor the identity of her killer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32130 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-09
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Penzler Pick:Much of Linda Fairstein's The Deadhouse is set in a section of New York City that hides in plain sight: Roosevelt Island, floating in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, a place with a lot of curious history and now home to several thousand middle-class residents living in high-rise apartment buildings. The corpse that kicks off the story's action was a Columbia history professor with the outlandish name of Lola Dakota. It turns out that she's not actually dead at all: the videotape of her bloody demise was a set-up, with her abusive husband having made the mistake of hiring undercover cops to kill her. Almost immediately, however, what was faked becomes real. Only this time Lola's body has been crushed in an elevator shaft, making her a victim unlikely to sit up and smile for the cameras as she had earlier in the day.

The Roosevelt Island connection comes with the late Dr Dakota's interest in urban archaeology, specifically the site on the island that was once a 19th-century smallpox hospital where quarantined patients were sent. What gives it modern significance--and enough to kill for--is the possibility of locating buried treasure. Much livelier than the title would promise, The Deadhouse is a mystery in the best tradition of a once-esteemed writer who is largely forgotten today--Helen Reilly, whose 1940s crime novels also showed readers quaint and forgotten corners of the city.

Linda Fairstein, creator of the Alexandra Cooper series, is also the nationally prominent Manhattan Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Sex Crimes Unit (who first came to prominence prosecuting the so-called "Preppy Murderer"). Wearing her mystery writer's hat, she has watched her work climb the bestseller lists. --Otto Penzler

Review
** 'If it is authenticity you demand, Linda Fairstein has got it in spades...she delivers the other ingredients, too: engaging characters, an intelligent story full of twists and terrific tension' Marcel Berlins, THE TIMES ** 'Darkly woven with a shocking history of New York asylums, penitentiaries and plagues. THE DEADHOUSE vonjures up a horrid past to solve a baffling murder.' Patricia Cornwell ** 'Gripping.' WOMAN'S WAY

From the Author
Every evening, as I drive home from my office in the criminal courthourse at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan to my apartment on the upper east side, I pass one of the most haunting and beautiful sights in New York City. Off on a small island in the middle of the East River, floodlit against the dark night sky, are the magnificent remains of a castle-like structure that have fascinated me for years.
As I wrote the earlier Alexandra Cooper novels, I was certain that I would eventually use the elegant ruins - NYC's only landmarked ruins - to set a sinister plot in which my heroine would become embroiled. When I began to research the history of the building, which you see on the front of the book jacket, it was even more interesting than I could have imagined.
The two-mile long strip of land was settled by a British family in the 17th century, and was given their name - Blackwell's Island - even after the city bought the property in the 19th century. As the immigrant population of Manhattan swelled in those years, the spread of contagious diseases in crowded neighborhoods was a serious danger to all. The city fathers decided to build a series of hospitals and set them on this remote island, adding to its landscape the first penitentiary....so that the prisoners could be made to care for the terminally ill patients. This building, the architectural gem among this misery, was designed by James Renwick, who went on to build our great St. Patrick's Cathedral.
What does all this have to do with the murder of Lola Dakota, a very modern woman who was a prominent university professor? Not only was Dakota in the middle of marital turmoil, trying to escape from a husband who hired hitmen to kill her, but she was involved in an archaelogical dig on Blackwell's Island, searching for valuable secrets that may have been buried there with patients and prisoners a century ago.
Alex Cooper, who mirrors my professional prosecutorial experience, experiences the excitement of working with her two police partners, Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, from the moment they get word of Dakota's death. It is the authenticity of the investigative procedure that she and her colleagues bring to this story of corruption and professional rivalry. The Deadhouse - an old Scottish word meaning "morgue" - becomes the focal point of the investigation, and I hope it becomes as intriguing to Coop's old fans and new readers as it has been to me.

Customer Reviews

My Introduction to Alexandra Cooper
I don't normally enjoy crime/thrillers, so I was not that keen to read this when given a copy. Attracted and intrigued by the cover photo, I started to read, and within pages I was hooked! Alexandra Cooper is a clever but vulnerable heroine who gave me an insight into the workings of the US criminal and legal system, as well as excellent descriptions of New York. At times I felt like one of Alex's friends, with whom she keeps in regular touch, in the way she described her days and nights. Since then I have bought all Linda Fairstein's other books, and while Final Jeopardy was marvellous, I felt Likely to Die and Cold Hit were not quite so appealing. I am nevertheless looking forward to reading the new titles. I hope that Alex Cooper does not have so many lucky escapes and cheat death so many times that she becomes an improbable and unbelievable character.

Not a patch on her other books.
Having read all of the other Fairstein books, I was really looking forward to this one, however I was left feeling very dissapointed with the content of this book. As I was reading the book, I kept thinking that I was skipping pages(I was'nt) as I could not figure out where she was getting her ideas and clues from. It was very confusing and then at the very end I thought "thats it?" like wheres the rest of the story!!. The only reason I read to the end of this book was that I kept hoping that it would get better, sadly that did not happen. Not a great read.

A good read but a poor ending
Another good book by Linda Fairstein - The Deadhouse is a fascinating read which will have you burning the midnight oil. The descriptions and historical information about the New York island are great.
Lots of twists and turns keep your interest until the last few chapters. Unfortunately the author appears to have been in a hurry to finish (or ran out of pages ? ) and the story leaves a lot of loose ends which is very frustrating.
Overall an interesting and nail-biting book, but it needs a couple more chapters on the end !!