Customer Reviews

Final Jeopardy

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Linda Fairstein has served for many years as New York's Assistant District Attorney in charge of prosecuting sex crimes. And according to all accounts, she is brilliant at her job. Well, Fairstein can put another notch in her belt, because she is a fine writer as well--right up there with the best of the genre.

"Final Jeopardy," her debut novel, introduces Alexandra Cooper, coincidentally an Assistant District Attorney in charge of prosecuting New York's sex crimes. Along with her very likeable sidekick, wisecracking but brilliant cop Mike Chapman, Alex works diligently to see that "her" victims, dead or alive, get justice. It's a grueling, wrenching task, but Alex thrives on it.

The book is off to a racing start as Alex, more than a little bit startled, reads her own obituary in the morning papers. And it never lets up from there. The confusion about Alex's "death" is solved quickly, but tragically. It seems that a good friend of hers, sexy bombshell actress Isabella Lascar, has been murdered while spending a supposedly incognito weekend at Alex's private Martha's Vineyard retreat. Was the murderer after Isabella? Or was it a case of mistaken identity--was the bullet really meant for Alex herself?

Those questions are only the beginning as Alex finds herself increasingly tangled in an incomprehensible web of intrigue. Who is the murderer? Try and guess. I did--and wasn't even close. There are enough colorful characters in the book, nefarious and otherwise, to make the reader keep turning the pages to find out who the "perp" is--and even more importantly, why the crime was committed in the first place.

From the first page to the breath-stopping last, this book has a ring of authenticity, and why not? Fairstein has lived what she writes, and it shows. Rumor has it that Ms. Fairstein has recently retired from her day job. Good! That means she can devote ALL her time to writing more juicy crime novels for those of us who are hooked!

I'm thrilled to have found her, and have already started the second in her Alexandra Cooper series. If you haven't treated yourself to Ms. Fairstein, give her a try. You will not regret it.

Am I the only one that has a problem with the way the 2 main characters speak to each other? They apparently have known each other for numerous years and are supposedly close friends. Why then, when they are the only 2 people in a room and are speaking only to each other, does the author write the conversations using the character's names in just about every sentence? I don't know about most folks, but when I am speaking to a friend I don't need to say their name at the beginning of each sentence. It just got on my nerves - and I never finished the book. I ordered this for my Kindle - and learned a valuable lesson.....always take advantage of the free samples!

I would have found this story of mystery and murder more engrossing if Fairstein's prose had been less murky, and the dialog less stilted. Conversations read like narrative, and it was often difficult to figure out who was speaking. The overall tone, even given the hard-boiled prosecutor and seen-it-all detectives, was flat and expressionless. With all the tightly written, literate crime novels out there, I wouldn't be inclined to try Ms. Fairstein's works again.

Had this been the first Linda Fairstein book I'd read, I would never have read another. Only stubborn refusal to give in allowed me to finish "Final Jeopardy." I found myself getting frustrated that such interesting premises and plot twists could be written in such a lifeless way.

Also, having met the characters in another novel, I was surprised at how unlikeable they were in this one. The heroine behaves unprofessionally in her work life, and she is somehow both emotional and cold in her private life. It was difficult to sympathize with her. She didn't come across that way in the other book.

There were good things. The short side stories of other sex crimes were interesting, if a little distracting. The author also does a good job of explaining why someone would want to pursue this particular disturbing career. You want to like her.

Devoted Fairstein fans may like this book, but reading this one before the others may make it impossible to pick up the next one.

This is an interesting murder mystery featuring an Assistant D.A. named Alexandra Cooper whose specialty is sex crimes. A starlet is murdered in the driveway of Cooper's Martha's Vineyard house, and it's up to Cooper to figure out what happened and who's guilty before the same thing happens to her.

The plot has some interesting turns, and it stays on the proper side of the plausibility line throughout. Cooper manages to juggle several cases at once while keeping her personal life going, and she even goes down a few dead ends in her investigation. Nevertheless, this isn't the kind of book where you flounder around for the first hundred pages while the author develops the characters; instead each character has a distinct personality and the plot gets moving from the very first page. It will definitely hold your interest. Well done, Fairstein.

The two things I feel make a book the most interesting are the character personalities and how they interact with one another. For a mystery, you also add in how well the mystery is written.

The characters in this book have very little personality. I have read reviews where people say how much character development there is. Where? Stating facts about a person is not developing them. I know I would be bored to tears if I knew these people in real life. The main character herself is vain and not very likable.

The dialogue is very strained and unnatural. For one thing, why do they continually address each other by name every time they speak to each other? Nobody speaks that way. The dialogue is extremely narrative and tedious. This is a big reason why the characters come out so boring. I actually found myself saying, "Oh shut up for 30 seconds". This is the biggest problem with the book. If the interactions and conversations between the characters were even slightly natural, the entire story would have been better. Instead, the dialogue is simply mundane.

The only reason I gave this two stars is because the main character being part of the SVU is different. That brought something original to the story. The mystery itself is ok, not great but not as bad as some I have read.

There are many more interesting police procedural mysteries out there. Ones that have far more interesting characters.

This is one of the few books in my life that I didn't finish. I read two Linda Fairstein books before and even though I find Alexandra Cooper to be one of the most unlikeable fictional main characters ever, the storylines were interesting enough.

In this book however, there were so many bits that spoilt the reading experience for me:

1. The characters

In all three books of the series that I read so far, Alexandra Cooper comes over as snooty and unlikeable. She has a privileged background, which is okay in itself, Elizabeth George managed to create a very likeable main character with a privileged background with Inspector Lynley. But Alexandra Coopers is in-your-face privileged. Constant mentioning of her Wellesley education, her house on Martha's Vinyard (here, it is essential to the story, I understand that, but it is mentioned in every book of the series that I read so far), her designer business clothes, her rich golden hair - it just gets to much. In addition she has a nasty way of bossing people around and telling them how to do their job (not just people working for her, but those in different jobs as well...) and generally carries an air of "I know best". - Her "sidekick" Chapman is one of the more likeable characters, but his "I'm so witty and love to tease others"-act sometimes gets out of hand. When 90 % of everything he says has that "witty-teasing" note, he really gets on my nerves.

Other characters get the stereotype treatment. Everybody who doesn't get along with Alexandra Coopers is bad and incompetent. The Vinyard people are all nice and simple, the secretary is fully dedicated, the press people are one-dimensional etc. etc.

2. The distracting information

Page-long biographies of everybody whose name is mentioned really went on my nerves. I understand that this is the first book of the series and that the main characters need to be introduced. However, I can't understand why a page-long biography of Alexandra Coopers parents is necessary at all. As far as I read, they never appeared in the story at all.

Alexandra Coopers has several cases to handle. That is natural and it's good to get a glimpse of them. However, we get more than a glimpse and as they interrupt the main story, after a while these extra cases are just annoying interruptions. They don't do anything for the story. They pop up, Alexandra Coopers does of course a marvellous job and outshines everyone else, then these cases are never mentioned again.

3. Partly bad prose

Parts of the book are just written badly. When Chapman and Alexandra Cooper fly to Martha's Vinyard, Alexandra tells Chapman a bit about the island - well, a several page bit. These pages sound as if the author copied them straight from a travel guide. There are far more elegant ways of connecting a location to a story. In addition, the "show don't tell" rule does not seem familiar to the author as many things are just written down instead of described.

Another annoying bit is that the characters address each other with different names all the times. First name, then last name, then nickname. For somebody not familiar with the characters, it's confusing. In general, it doesn't make any sense. Do you constantly change the names you address your friends/colleagues with? I don't and I don't know anybody that does (the occasional throwing in of a nickname excepted).

So, I fought my way through the first couple of hundred pages. But after a while, when one distraction after the other spoilt my reading pleasure, I noticed that I couldn't care less about who the murderer was. This book was a big disappointment.

I bought and read this book under the premise that an expert in the field of legal crime was taking a step to bring her accumen to the world of fiction. I was somewhat disappointed. The main plot itself is mundane and cliched. The sidetrips into other cases are interesting to a point but not eye-opening like a Patricia Cornwell. The supporting cast needs fleshing out. Beyond Chapman, the cop sidekick, you never really get a feel for the other folks; to the point that you need to review occasionally to differentiate between a friend and a secretary. I'm interested enough to take a look at her two other novels, but I can't heartily endorse her work based on this first effort.

I am still very much up in the air about this book.

In the past I have loved books by Linda Fairstein, but for some reason, this one just didn't come across as well. The storyline and the supporting characters felt rather flat, nothing really stood out in the storyline and I didn't feel the urgency that would be necessary for a book like this.

In a case of mistaken identity, Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper has been reported murdered when a body fitting Alex's description is found in a car rented to her on a deserted road leading to the summer home of Alexandra Cooper - S e x Crimes Prosecutor.

But it's not Alex, its Isabella Lascar, a film star that just needs a break from her life and some peace and quiet. Now the question is who was the real intended victim? As Alex combs her past cases to see who would be out for revenge and scouring Isabella's life to find the stalker that was writing letters and threatening call to her, the hunt goes on for the killer and the reason behind the murder.

The ending is good, if a bit unbelievable, but overall, the book just didn't do anything for me. I will pick up other books by Ms Fairstein, because of past success, but for this one, I would recommend that you pass.

The plot was too easy here. The author generally writes well, but her style could be improved. I was entertained, but not to the point where I would consider the author a good crime novelist. I would not recommend this book, because there are too many other fiction-crime novels that are more enjoyable reads.