Amazon.com: The Ties That Bind: A Fiona Fitzgerald Novel (9781556113956): Warren Adler: Books

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 1994

Detective Fiona Fitzgerald, the star of Immaculate Deception, teams up with a brilliant black partner to determine if a Supreme Court Associate Justice is the killer of the daughter of a powerful Washington lawyer. 20,000 first printing.

#outer_postBodyPS { display: none; } #psGradient { display: none; } #psPlaceHolder { display: none; } #psExpand { display: none; } Detective Fiona Fitzgerald, the star of Immaculate Deception, teams up with a brilliant black partner to determine if a Supreme Court Associate Justice is the killer of the daughter of a powerful Washington lawyer. 20,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Adler's newest mystery featuring Washington, D.C., cop Fiona FitzGerald, last seen in The Witch of Watergate , is a forceful story sandwiched between a sanctimonious start and a sensationalized ending. The death of a young woman found bound and sexually abused in a hotel room spurs Fiona and her new partner, the statuesque, African American Gail Prentiss, to a chapter of female commiseration. Like Fiona and Gail, the dead woman was socially connected and drop-dead beautiful. The manner of death leads the puritanical Gail to a young lawyer known to lean towards rough sex. But the killing strikes a deeper emotion in Fiona, as the graffiti-adorned body of the girl bears a striking resemblance to her own flesh following a kinky session with her former lover Farley Lipscomb, who is now a Supreme Court Associate Justice. Although the list of suspects is scant, Adler deftly blends in other plot ingredients; now deeply ambivalent about submissive/dominant sex, Fiona's desire for revenge against Farley impairs both her partnership with Gail and the investigation. The blockbuster ending, although prepared for by the earlier whips-and-chains material, has an exaggerated, comics-like tone, leaving this tale flawed in the places that count the most in crime fiction.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Fiona Fitzgerald comes from a well-to-do background, so it's a shock to her friends when she becomes--gasp!--a cop in Washington, D.C. But Fiona's social connections are a big help when she finds herself investigating crimes among the rich and powerful. With a smart, tough, stubborn, and beautiful African American woman as her new partner, Fiona finds herself embroiled in a politically sensitive case involving the S & M torture death of an influential politician's daughter. The case triggers some long-buried feelings in Fiona, who was herself the victim years earlier of S & M torture by a lover who's since become an associate justice on the Supreme Court. Convinced her old lover is the killer despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, Fiona is determined to prove his guilt at any cost. Adler's book is a study in contrasts, with lots of rhetoric about feminism, racial equality, and equal opportunity juxtaposed against kinky, sadistic sex, bondage and punishment, and sad, sick relationships. It's an odd book that certainly won't appeal to every reader, but in its own way, it's quite compelling. Emily Melton

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More About the Author

› Visit Amazon's Warren Adler Page

Warren Adler is a world-renowned novelist, short story writer and playwright. His 32 novels and story collections have been translated into more than 25 languages and two of his novels, The War of the Roses and Random Hearts, have been made into enormously popular movies, shown continually throughout the world.

Three short stories from his acclaimed collection, The Sunset Gang, have been adapted as a trilogy and shown repeatedly on the Public Television network.

Mr. Adler's blogs appear regularly in the Huffington Post and other sites throughout the world and his short stories appear in numerous anthologies.

Mr. Adler is a pioneer in electronic publishing. He was one of the first authors to acquire his complete backlist and to convert his entire library to digital publishing formats.

A product of the New York public school system, Mr. Adler graduated from Brooklyn Technical High School and New York University, where he majored in English literature. In 2009, he was honored by being chosen "Alumni of the Year" at NYU's School of Arts and Science. He has taught novel writing at honors seminars at NYU.

After graduating from New York University with a degree in English literature, Mr. Adler worked for the New York Daily News before becoming Editor of the Queens Post, a prize winning weekly newspaper on Long Island. His column, "Pepper on the Side," became a staple of a number of newspapers in the country.

During the Korean War, after basic training, he was recruited by Armed Forces Press Service to serve in the Pentagon as the only Washington Correspondent for the service. His Washington by-line went all over the world and was published in every publication put out by the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard.