May 27, 2013
In bestseller Fairstein’s engrossing 15th novel featuring ADA Alexandra “Coop” Cooper (after 2012’s Night Watch), the Manhattan sex crimes prosecutor digs into the history of Central Park when the murdered body of a teenage girl is found near Bethesda Fountain with its angel statuette. With help from detective pals Mercer Wallace and Mike Chapman, Coop soon connects the crime to the park’s forgotten 19th-century black enclave, Seneca Village, and a railroad tycoon who fashioned extravagant figurines for his daughter. Simmering under the tense investigation is the chemistry between Mike and Coop—which eventually kindles the wrath of Mike’s ex-lover, Judge Jessica Pell. After another female victim turns up, Coop gets on the trail of a rapist will a tell-tale clue—the words “Kill Coop” tattooed on his hand. In the end, Fairstein combines the many disparate strands in fortuitous ways to bring about a surprising finale. 7-city author tour. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.
July 15, 2013
If you thought Sex Crimes Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper had already examined a body planted on every single block of Manhattan (Night Watch, 2012, etc.), you've forgotten about Central Park. The young woman perhaps three months dead who's washed up beneath Bow Bridge reunites Alex with her old buddy Detective Mike Chapman, NYPD Homicide. And her other friends would love to see Alex and Mike thrown even closer together. Although the crime is so old, the killer so long gone and the victim so impossible to identify that Alex suspects that her vindictive higher-ups have tossed her the case to guarantee that she fails, she's still likely to spend plenty of time with Mike, and there's no reason that can't be quality time, even intimate time. The fly in the ointment is that Mike's being stalked by Judge Jessica Pell, who's miffed that he's been pulled off her security detail because the threats she claims imperiled her life don't seem to have panned out, and she's stuck on Mike and antagonistic toward Alex. The evidence in the Central Park murder points to serial rapist Raymond Tanner, but Alex annoys everyone by her persistence in tying the case to the kidnapping a generation ago of little Lucy Dalton from the famed Dakota. Luckily, Alex is massively well-informed about the park's history and topography, and nearly every witness she talks to gets a chance to add more details about the neighborhood. Fairstein seems less interested in dramatizing official procedure or generating suspense than in serving as a relentlessly didactic tour guide in the mode of Margaret Truman. You'll learn an awful lot about Central Park, but one thing you won't learn is that the setting guarantees a successful thriller.
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June 1, 2013
Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper and detective Mike Chapman are called to the scene when the naked corpse of a young woman turns up in Central Park. Working to identify her and to determine whether a serial killer is on the loose, the two must search Central Park's vast reaches, with its many hidden lakes, waterfalls, and caves. Readers are also swept into the inner recesses of one of New York's most storied icons, the legendary Dakota apartment building, when clues left at the murder scene lead Coop and Chapman to a private collection of one of the building's residents. Despite Fairstein's tendency to relay vast amounts of exposition through her characters' dialogue, making them sound, at times, like obnoxious know-it-alls, there's no denying that Central Park's topography and history are plenty fascinating, and she nicely contrasts the natural beauty of the park and the dark deeds committed within its environs. The promise of romance between the longtime series leads also adds a certain frisson to this solid fifteenth entry in the series. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper novels are international best-sellers that have been translated into more than a dozen languages; her fifteenth entry in the series is likely to follow suit.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)