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Death Angel (Alex Cooper) Paperback – May 6, 2014
by
Linda Fairstein
(Author)
Linda Fairstein
(Author)
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Book 15 of 20: Alex Cooper
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Print length512 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherDutton
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Publication dateMay 6, 2014
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Reading age18 years and up
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Dimensions4.25 x 1.06 x 7.56 inches
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ISBN-100451417283
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ISBN-13978-0451417282
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“One of the best crime fiction writers in America today.”—Nelson DeMille
“A champion teller of detective tales.”—USA Today
“The queen of intelligent suspense.”—Lee Child
“Alex Cooper is a fascinating heroine.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Once again, Ms. Fairstein illuminates the menacing nighttime escapades and long lost skeletons, literal and metaphorical, of a city that refuses to sleep.”—Vineyard Gazette
“A real page-turner.”—The Hartford Book Examiner
“A champion teller of detective tales.”—USA Today
“The queen of intelligent suspense.”—Lee Child
“Alex Cooper is a fascinating heroine.”—O, The Oprah Magazine
“Once again, Ms. Fairstein illuminates the menacing nighttime escapades and long lost skeletons, literal and metaphorical, of a city that refuses to sleep.”—Vineyard Gazette
“A real page-turner.”—The Hartford Book Examiner
About the Author
Linda Fairstein was chief of the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for more than two decades and is America’s foremost legal expert on sexual assault and domestic violence. Her Alexandra Cooper novels are international bestsellers, and they have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Fairstein was the winner of the International Thriller Writers Silver Bullet Award in 2010. She lives in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One
“Can you hold up those guys with the body bag, Loo?” I was jogging down the steps from the top of Bethesda Terrace, trying to catch up with Mercer Wallace, when the four cops and two techs from the ME’s office passed me on their climb toward the waiting morgue van.
The lieutenant had his back to me, standing on the edge of the Lake and pointing at something across the water. Ray Peterson, the man in charge of Manhattan North Homicide, either couldn’t hear me shouting because of the distance or wasn’t interested in what I had to say.
I swiveled and backtracked up the broad staircase, hoping to overtake the crew carrying the corpse to the roadway on the 72nd Street transverse. But they had already reached the open doors of the transport vehicle by the time I hit the pavement and was stopped by uniformed cops who were stringing yellow crime scene tape across the gaping space between the elegant balustrades.
“Hey, Jack.” After more than twelve years as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, I knew the morgue attendants almost as well as I knew my doormen. “It’s me, Alex Cooper. Give me three minutes with her, please.”
Jack picked his head up and turned toward me just as one of the officers brushed my hand off the tape. “In or out, ma’am?” the cop growled. “You want to ride with the body, that’s fine. But you don’t get back in here once you walk past this point.”
I needed to talk to the lieutenant and be briefed on the findings along with Mercer, but I also wanted to see the girl whose remains had been found splayed beneath the northern abutment of Bow Bridge early this morning. I wanted to know what she looked like now, before her flesh met the cold instruments of the autopsy room.
Jack called out over the back of the young cop who was restraining me. “No can do, Alex. It’s already a madhouse here between the regulars and the press scavengers. Feel free to drop by my office later on. She won’t be on the table until tomorrow.”
It was only 7:45, but it was obvious that police officers from all over the city were being bused in from their commands to form a perimeter around the roadways that led to the Terrace and the Lake, which was the very centerpiece of the Park. There was nothing more difficult to secure than a crime scene that had no obvious boundaries, in the middle of the most trafficked public space on the planet.
Mercer Wallace, a first-grade detective with the Special Victims Unit and one of my best friends, had picked me up at my home just a few blocks from the Park entrance. We had passed trucks from every major media outlet and watched as reporters and camera crews sneaked through the dense spring growth of bushes and plantings to get closer to the vista where death had intruded on this glorious spring morning.
“Alexandra, we’re waiting on you.” Mercer was shouting at me from beside the fountain at the foot of the steps.
I waved at him to let him know I’d heard him, then watched the van drive off before retracing my way down toward the Lake. I’d left the stern cop manning the tape barrier with more pushy onlookers to contend with than me. It was too early for the thousands of tourists who would flood the Park later on this June day, but the daily complement of joggers, power walkers, bikers, dog owners, Rollerbladers, and wildlife aficionados all seemed to be stopped in their tracks, trying to figure out the cause of the commotion below.
This time I took the two-tiered staircase—the eastern one— more slowly than my first descent minutes ago. I looked around at the stunning landscape and the water of the calm Lake sparkling with morning sunlight, but my eyes darted from tree to tree as figures—some in blue uniforms but mostly civilians in exercise gear—appeared on every path and in each leafy opening, like characters in a fast-moving video game. I wondered if the killer or killers were among them.
“Don’t be looking for your perp, Alexandra,” Mercer said. “He’s long gone.”
“How do you know?”
I joined up with him, and we continued on to the huddle of detectives clustered around the lieutenant. I recognized most of them from cases we had worked together—they greeted me by name—while those I hadn’t met before acknowledged my presence with a “Good morning, counselor,” the arm’s-length term for a prosecutor—especially when she or he was treading on NYPD turf.
Mercer finished his thought. “’Cause she’s been dead for weeks. Just washed up today.”
“According to . . . ?”
“Johnny Mayes was here before we arrived.”
Mayes was a brilliant young forensic pathologist. I nodded, understanding how well he knew his business.
“Thanks for coming over, Alex,” the lieutenant said while he put out his cigarette against the side of the fountain before placing the stub in the pocket of his tattered brown jacket. No need to leave his DNA in saliva on a butt that would be picked up by Crime Scene investigators who were already scouring both sides of the shoreline for clues. “I wanted you to eyeball the kid before we moved her, but the paparazzi with the long-distance lenses were scrambling through the brush here. Had to whisk her the hell out before they grabbed one of the rowboats for a close-up.”
“Got it, Loo. I’m here for whatever you need.”
I’d been the prosecutor in charge of the Special Victims Unit for almost ten years. Our office had long had a system of assistant DAs “riding” homicides and major felonies—going out on calls with detectives 24/7—to try to make the legal piece of every valid case hold up in court. We went to crime scenes and station houses, hospitals and morgues—taking statements from suspects and witnesses, overseeing lineups, drafting search warrants, and generally lending our expertise on all matters likely to result in an arrest.
My specialty was a late entry in the field of criminal law. Sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, sex trafficking, and homicides related to these acts had been ignored by our justice system since American courts were created. But our office had lobbied for legislative reform and pioneered techniques to allow these victims— too long without voices—to begin to triumph in the courtroom in the late ’70s and early ’80s, a period when violent crime threatened to devour the island of Manhattan.
Lieutenant Peterson had already lit his next cigarette. “Don’t know what we need yet. Don’t know much.”
“What else did Dr. Mayes say?”
Peterson started to walk along the path that led from the fountain toward Bow Bridge, which arched over the Lake to the Ramble. He repeated to me what he had probably just told Mercer, who was a step or two behind me.
“Doc says he doubted she was even twenty years old.”
“No ID on her?”
“Pretty hard to carry your driver’s license when you’re naked, Alex.”
I could see five men on the far side of the bridge—detectives, no doubt—all of them wearing booties and vinyl gloves. Four were standing at the water’s edge, while one was crouching directly beneath the stone archway, his toes about to disappear in the water.
“Is that Mike?” I asked the lieutenant. His thick head of black hair was a giveaway, even at this distance, confirmed by his trademark navy blazer.
“Yeah. A rookie from the Central Park precinct caught the squeal. Mike was working a day tour, so I assigned the case to him.”
Mike Chapman had come on the job shortly before I graduated from law school and joined the DA’s office. He and Mercer had partnered together on many of the worst cases imaginable, remaining close friends after Mercer transferred to SVU, preferring to work with victims who survived their attacks.
The three of us started across the span, a familiar image in countless Park photographs featuring boaters and ice skaters. I couldn’t help but look down at the water, as though some clue was about to float by just in time for me to spot it.
Mike ducked out and stepped back to talk to the other guys from the squad. I could see him shaking his head. He hadn’t noticed our approach.
“Anything, Mike?” Peterson called out.
“Nothing, Loo,” Mike shouted over his shoulder.
“Here’s your minder, Chapman,” Freddie Figueroa said, laughing as he pointed at me. My relationship with Mike was a source of great amusement to many of our colleagues, who couldn’t figure how I tolerated his constant needling yet knew he’d covered my back in more situations than I could count. “You’d better come up with something fast.”
“Hey, Coop,” Mike said, flashing all one hundred megawatts of his best grin. “Hope you brought a crystal ball. This one will take more than your brains.”
I started to walk to the end of the bridge, but he called me off.
“Stay there. Last thing we need is another pair of footprints in the mud. Did you see my girl?”
I shook my head. “Jack was ready to roll. The locals were about to surround him, so he took off.”
“Hal’s got plenty of close-ups if you want to take a look.”
Hal Sherman, one of the masters of crime scene investigations, came up behind me. He’d been photographing each of the approaches to the Lake, on the theory that no one would know what angles were important until we had a sense of what had happened to this victim and where.
“Hey, Alex. Too quiet too long, huh?” Hal said, patting me on the back before he reached for his notepad. “That statue on top of the fountain, any idea what she’s called?”
I looked across at the colossal bronze figure of a woman, raised high above the plaza and held aloft by four cherubs, with wings outstretched as she delivered her blessing over the Lake below.
“Sure, Hal,” I said as he scratched the answer on a notepad. “She’s the most iconic statue in the Park. She’s called the Angel of the Waters.”
Mike Chapman joined us on the bridge, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them in his rear pants pocket. “That name worked for her once upon a time, Coop. Now she stands up there with the best vantage point of all, sees everything that goes on here, but gives us nothing. I’d like to know everything that she knows.”
“It’s not even eight o’clock, and you’re loaded for bear. Why take it out on an angel?”
“It’s not the first body I’ve had in this Lake, Coop. We’ve got two cold cases—young women who have never been identified whose files are collecting dust in the squad room.”
“How old are those runs that I don’t even know about them?” I asked. “Are you figuring this one falls into some kind of pattern with the others?”
“I’m just thinking that statue may be an attractive nuisance. Maybe she blessed the waters a century ago, but now she’s a magnet for murder. She’s an angel, all right,” Mike said, staring at the beautiful sunlit figure that towered over us. “A death angel.”
“Can you hold up those guys with the body bag, Loo?” I was jogging down the steps from the top of Bethesda Terrace, trying to catch up with Mercer Wallace, when the four cops and two techs from the ME’s office passed me on their climb toward the waiting morgue van.
The lieutenant had his back to me, standing on the edge of the Lake and pointing at something across the water. Ray Peterson, the man in charge of Manhattan North Homicide, either couldn’t hear me shouting because of the distance or wasn’t interested in what I had to say.
I swiveled and backtracked up the broad staircase, hoping to overtake the crew carrying the corpse to the roadway on the 72nd Street transverse. But they had already reached the open doors of the transport vehicle by the time I hit the pavement and was stopped by uniformed cops who were stringing yellow crime scene tape across the gaping space between the elegant balustrades.
“Hey, Jack.” After more than twelve years as a prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, I knew the morgue attendants almost as well as I knew my doormen. “It’s me, Alex Cooper. Give me three minutes with her, please.”
Jack picked his head up and turned toward me just as one of the officers brushed my hand off the tape. “In or out, ma’am?” the cop growled. “You want to ride with the body, that’s fine. But you don’t get back in here once you walk past this point.”
I needed to talk to the lieutenant and be briefed on the findings along with Mercer, but I also wanted to see the girl whose remains had been found splayed beneath the northern abutment of Bow Bridge early this morning. I wanted to know what she looked like now, before her flesh met the cold instruments of the autopsy room.
Jack called out over the back of the young cop who was restraining me. “No can do, Alex. It’s already a madhouse here between the regulars and the press scavengers. Feel free to drop by my office later on. She won’t be on the table until tomorrow.”
It was only 7:45, but it was obvious that police officers from all over the city were being bused in from their commands to form a perimeter around the roadways that led to the Terrace and the Lake, which was the very centerpiece of the Park. There was nothing more difficult to secure than a crime scene that had no obvious boundaries, in the middle of the most trafficked public space on the planet.
Mercer Wallace, a first-grade detective with the Special Victims Unit and one of my best friends, had picked me up at my home just a few blocks from the Park entrance. We had passed trucks from every major media outlet and watched as reporters and camera crews sneaked through the dense spring growth of bushes and plantings to get closer to the vista where death had intruded on this glorious spring morning.
“Alexandra, we’re waiting on you.” Mercer was shouting at me from beside the fountain at the foot of the steps.
I waved at him to let him know I’d heard him, then watched the van drive off before retracing my way down toward the Lake. I’d left the stern cop manning the tape barrier with more pushy onlookers to contend with than me. It was too early for the thousands of tourists who would flood the Park later on this June day, but the daily complement of joggers, power walkers, bikers, dog owners, Rollerbladers, and wildlife aficionados all seemed to be stopped in their tracks, trying to figure out the cause of the commotion below.
This time I took the two-tiered staircase—the eastern one— more slowly than my first descent minutes ago. I looked around at the stunning landscape and the water of the calm Lake sparkling with morning sunlight, but my eyes darted from tree to tree as figures—some in blue uniforms but mostly civilians in exercise gear—appeared on every path and in each leafy opening, like characters in a fast-moving video game. I wondered if the killer or killers were among them.
“Don’t be looking for your perp, Alexandra,” Mercer said. “He’s long gone.”
“How do you know?”
I joined up with him, and we continued on to the huddle of detectives clustered around the lieutenant. I recognized most of them from cases we had worked together—they greeted me by name—while those I hadn’t met before acknowledged my presence with a “Good morning, counselor,” the arm’s-length term for a prosecutor—especially when she or he was treading on NYPD turf.
Mercer finished his thought. “’Cause she’s been dead for weeks. Just washed up today.”
“According to . . . ?”
“Johnny Mayes was here before we arrived.”
Mayes was a brilliant young forensic pathologist. I nodded, understanding how well he knew his business.
“Thanks for coming over, Alex,” the lieutenant said while he put out his cigarette against the side of the fountain before placing the stub in the pocket of his tattered brown jacket. No need to leave his DNA in saliva on a butt that would be picked up by Crime Scene investigators who were already scouring both sides of the shoreline for clues. “I wanted you to eyeball the kid before we moved her, but the paparazzi with the long-distance lenses were scrambling through the brush here. Had to whisk her the hell out before they grabbed one of the rowboats for a close-up.”
“Got it, Loo. I’m here for whatever you need.”
I’d been the prosecutor in charge of the Special Victims Unit for almost ten years. Our office had long had a system of assistant DAs “riding” homicides and major felonies—going out on calls with detectives 24/7—to try to make the legal piece of every valid case hold up in court. We went to crime scenes and station houses, hospitals and morgues—taking statements from suspects and witnesses, overseeing lineups, drafting search warrants, and generally lending our expertise on all matters likely to result in an arrest.
My specialty was a late entry in the field of criminal law. Sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, sex trafficking, and homicides related to these acts had been ignored by our justice system since American courts were created. But our office had lobbied for legislative reform and pioneered techniques to allow these victims— too long without voices—to begin to triumph in the courtroom in the late ’70s and early ’80s, a period when violent crime threatened to devour the island of Manhattan.
Lieutenant Peterson had already lit his next cigarette. “Don’t know what we need yet. Don’t know much.”
“What else did Dr. Mayes say?”
Peterson started to walk along the path that led from the fountain toward Bow Bridge, which arched over the Lake to the Ramble. He repeated to me what he had probably just told Mercer, who was a step or two behind me.
“Doc says he doubted she was even twenty years old.”
“No ID on her?”
“Pretty hard to carry your driver’s license when you’re naked, Alex.”
I could see five men on the far side of the bridge—detectives, no doubt—all of them wearing booties and vinyl gloves. Four were standing at the water’s edge, while one was crouching directly beneath the stone archway, his toes about to disappear in the water.
“Is that Mike?” I asked the lieutenant. His thick head of black hair was a giveaway, even at this distance, confirmed by his trademark navy blazer.
“Yeah. A rookie from the Central Park precinct caught the squeal. Mike was working a day tour, so I assigned the case to him.”
Mike Chapman had come on the job shortly before I graduated from law school and joined the DA’s office. He and Mercer had partnered together on many of the worst cases imaginable, remaining close friends after Mercer transferred to SVU, preferring to work with victims who survived their attacks.
The three of us started across the span, a familiar image in countless Park photographs featuring boaters and ice skaters. I couldn’t help but look down at the water, as though some clue was about to float by just in time for me to spot it.
Mike ducked out and stepped back to talk to the other guys from the squad. I could see him shaking his head. He hadn’t noticed our approach.
“Anything, Mike?” Peterson called out.
“Nothing, Loo,” Mike shouted over his shoulder.
“Here’s your minder, Chapman,” Freddie Figueroa said, laughing as he pointed at me. My relationship with Mike was a source of great amusement to many of our colleagues, who couldn’t figure how I tolerated his constant needling yet knew he’d covered my back in more situations than I could count. “You’d better come up with something fast.”
“Hey, Coop,” Mike said, flashing all one hundred megawatts of his best grin. “Hope you brought a crystal ball. This one will take more than your brains.”
I started to walk to the end of the bridge, but he called me off.
“Stay there. Last thing we need is another pair of footprints in the mud. Did you see my girl?”
I shook my head. “Jack was ready to roll. The locals were about to surround him, so he took off.”
“Hal’s got plenty of close-ups if you want to take a look.”
Hal Sherman, one of the masters of crime scene investigations, came up behind me. He’d been photographing each of the approaches to the Lake, on the theory that no one would know what angles were important until we had a sense of what had happened to this victim and where.
“Hey, Alex. Too quiet too long, huh?” Hal said, patting me on the back before he reached for his notepad. “That statue on top of the fountain, any idea what she’s called?”
I looked across at the colossal bronze figure of a woman, raised high above the plaza and held aloft by four cherubs, with wings outstretched as she delivered her blessing over the Lake below.
“Sure, Hal,” I said as he scratched the answer on a notepad. “She’s the most iconic statue in the Park. She’s called the Angel of the Waters.”
Mike Chapman joined us on the bridge, pulling off his gloves and stuffing them in his rear pants pocket. “That name worked for her once upon a time, Coop. Now she stands up there with the best vantage point of all, sees everything that goes on here, but gives us nothing. I’d like to know everything that she knows.”
“It’s not even eight o’clock, and you’re loaded for bear. Why take it out on an angel?”
“It’s not the first body I’ve had in this Lake, Coop. We’ve got two cold cases—young women who have never been identified whose files are collecting dust in the squad room.”
“How old are those runs that I don’t even know about them?” I asked. “Are you figuring this one falls into some kind of pattern with the others?”
“I’m just thinking that statue may be an attractive nuisance. Maybe she blessed the waters a century ago, but now she’s a magnet for murder. She’s an angel, all right,” Mike said, staring at the beautiful sunlit figure that towered over us. “A death angel.”
Product details
- Publisher : Dutton; Reprint edition (May 6, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0451417283
- ISBN-13 : 978-0451417282
- Reading age : 18 years and up
- Item Weight : 9.6 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.25 x 1.06 x 7.56 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#881,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,040 in Legal Thrillers (Books)
- #15,162 in Police Procedurals (Books)
- #20,542 in Murder Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
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Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2017
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Excellent
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Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2014
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Good one
36 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2014
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ok
33 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 29, 2020
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Well I have just finished reading 15 books in a row on this series. I think it's safe to say I am hooked & never want this series to come to an end. I love a good mystery with well written characters, throw in a little romance, a little danger, and best of all Linda Fairstein throws in lots of 1 of my favorite things "history". My brother has lived in NY for years & is a well known dancer, choreographer, costumer & set designer who travels around the world to perform (at least he did prior to COVID-19). I have been reading bits of the NY history from these books & telling him he would enjoy reading the series for that fact alone. I also told him that my list of things I want to do when I next visit him in NY is growing exponentially. Guess I will simply have to make it a longer visit. I don't want to live there, but it's an incredible place to visit. Thanks Ms. Fairstein for such a fantastic series! I am going through some very challenging things right now, including caring for my father as he is dying. These books take me somewhere else for the time I am reading them. I have always been an avid reader, my whole family is. I love that the characters & their family & friends become so real. I feel I know them & want to get to know them even better. I can see the words on the page come to life in technicolor, jump starting my imagination & taking me on an exciting journey. It's hard to put the story down & go to bed!
Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2014
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very good!
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Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2016
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A good detective story, with non-obvious plot and interesting characters. The background on Central Park and New York in general is also fascinating. The problem is that attempts to diversify (in this case, dilute) the novel with romantic details of the protagonist's personal life make it trivial, generic and downright boring. Linda Fairstein is a much better Agatha Christie than she is a Jane Austin. I hope Alex Cooper one day takes a veil, and limits herself to what she does best. The same for the Author.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2013
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I'm surprised at all the five star reviews; I found Death Angel unsatisfying. Looking back from the end, the plot, as usual, was well crafted. As I was reading, however, I was struck by how irrelevant the murder victim seemed. Mostly, I was reading a paean to Central Park, the real main character in the story. That will not surprise regular devotees of Ms. Fairstein, since some New York site is always the center of her books. In this one, however, I thought the subordination of the human stories to the place story was a bit overdone.
My real disappointment, however, is the characters. As for Alex Cooper herself, I am confused about how old she is. She seems not to be aging in real time, and yet the book is not "historical" -- it seems to take place in the here and now. I know that authors do this, but it always confuses me. I can't see how Alex can still be "young" and after following her through 15 books, it's starting to bother me that her life does not move at all. She still has the same job (Well, OK); her relationships with her colleagues have not changed, her bosses have not changed, she has no life outside of her job. In short, she comes across, at least to me, as not a person but a stick figure used to tell the story. She needs a life.
Regular Fairstein readers may object that she has a life, as illustrated in the most recent previous book, in which she spent time in France with her love interest. But like his predecessors, he didn't stick around very long and the reader never was able to see him as a live person -- i'm sure most readers felt, as I did, that he was mostly a plot device.
Well, OK again, I don't really care if Alex has a boyfriend, and romance is clearly not Ms. Fairstein's forte. But where I think the characters have really gone off the rails is with Cooper ready to embrace romance with Chapman. Based on their respective characters in all previous books, this would be a terrible mistake. Alex has never been romantically attracted to Chapman and she doesn't need to justify it, she just isn't. Fairstein does not need to tie up Cooper and Chapman like Castle and Beckett, or other dumb TV mates. Even worse, Chapman is domestic violence waiting to happen. Going back several books, and including Death Angel, his "teasing" has been inappropriate and hostile. It is NOT friendly teasing. It's eased up a bit in this volume, but was especially bad in the book that was about synagogues. My theory is that he's deeply angry that she has not wanted (until now, apparently) to be romantically involved with him. He feels inferior and blames her. How can Fairstein miss this about her own characters? I'm not making it up. He makes comments that cut Alex down in front of her bosses and in front of total strangers. She should stay away from him.
In summary, Ms Fairstein's characters have begun to seem tired, and what may be her solution strikes me as outrageous. Go back and reread the earlier books.
As a long-time fan, I hope Ms. Fairstein steps away from this precipice.
My real disappointment, however, is the characters. As for Alex Cooper herself, I am confused about how old she is. She seems not to be aging in real time, and yet the book is not "historical" -- it seems to take place in the here and now. I know that authors do this, but it always confuses me. I can't see how Alex can still be "young" and after following her through 15 books, it's starting to bother me that her life does not move at all. She still has the same job (Well, OK); her relationships with her colleagues have not changed, her bosses have not changed, she has no life outside of her job. In short, she comes across, at least to me, as not a person but a stick figure used to tell the story. She needs a life.
Regular Fairstein readers may object that she has a life, as illustrated in the most recent previous book, in which she spent time in France with her love interest. But like his predecessors, he didn't stick around very long and the reader never was able to see him as a live person -- i'm sure most readers felt, as I did, that he was mostly a plot device.
Well, OK again, I don't really care if Alex has a boyfriend, and romance is clearly not Ms. Fairstein's forte. But where I think the characters have really gone off the rails is with Cooper ready to embrace romance with Chapman. Based on their respective characters in all previous books, this would be a terrible mistake. Alex has never been romantically attracted to Chapman and she doesn't need to justify it, she just isn't. Fairstein does not need to tie up Cooper and Chapman like Castle and Beckett, or other dumb TV mates. Even worse, Chapman is domestic violence waiting to happen. Going back several books, and including Death Angel, his "teasing" has been inappropriate and hostile. It is NOT friendly teasing. It's eased up a bit in this volume, but was especially bad in the book that was about synagogues. My theory is that he's deeply angry that she has not wanted (until now, apparently) to be romantically involved with him. He feels inferior and blames her. How can Fairstein miss this about her own characters? I'm not making it up. He makes comments that cut Alex down in front of her bosses and in front of total strangers. She should stay away from him.
In summary, Ms Fairstein's characters have begun to seem tired, and what may be her solution strikes me as outrageous. Go back and reread the earlier books.
As a long-time fan, I hope Ms. Fairstein steps away from this precipice.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 4, 2017
Verified Purchase
I agree that her books follow the same formula with the same three characters solving the crimes. One of them, Mike Chapman has become offensive to me because he ridicules Alice Cooper. Being the strong, educated woman that she is, I don't know why she allows it. He's got to go. I do like the fact that she gives you historical facts about New York; even when you live here, you don't necessarily know the history of a place.
I agree with one reviewer that said it would be more interesting if she could show off her courtroom skills. In other words, catch the murderer and prosecute him successfully,.It worked for Law & Order. I've read two of Fairstein's books, and that's it for me.
I agree with one reviewer that said it would be more interesting if she could show off her courtroom skills. In other words, catch the murderer and prosecute him successfully,.It worked for Law & Order. I've read two of Fairstein's books, and that's it for me.
Top reviews from other countries

Linda
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2019Verified Purchase
As always, Linda Fairstein never fails to disappoint. Yet again she tells a story that is full of historical information about New York City. The characters of Alexandra, Mike and Mercer are so alive and the cases they work on are both exciting and, in places, scary, especially when “Coop” gets herself into danger. This time we are told intriguing facts about the history of Central Park and the author weaves her story in and around the park, using her imagination and knowledge to give us an extraordinary and somewhat believable situation where crimes have been happening for decades, most of them remaining unsolved. In addition to the main plot, we are treated to a hint of something that most readers have been waiting for since book one. Although this is never totally followed through, I have a sneaking suspicion that we may be exploring that trail further in the next episode. All in all, a delightfully written story that I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Lucy T
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good book. Good condition.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 8, 2018Verified Purchase
Easy to read crime novel - similar pattern in all her work, but a nice underlying story too.
I now own several of her books.
Book arrived promptly in a good condition.
I now own several of her books.
Book arrived promptly in a good condition.

Patricia M. Straughan
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great story but still too much repetition from previous books
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2014Verified Purchase
Thoroughly enjoyed the history of Central Park, so much that I want to go and visit it. One of Linda Fairstein's best for some time but the repetitions of Alexandra Cooper's family history, her friendships and visits to Martha's Vineyard still irritate. Not sure if this is lazy writing or if the publisher is requesting it. A synopsis at the beginning or end would do!

Mrs T.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 20, 2017Verified Purchase
The setting of the park, with all its history,and all the detail had me captivated, and the twist with the Dalton family tragedy made you want to keep o n reading brilliant research, and such detail

Isabelle Forbes
2.0 out of 5 stars
Death Angel
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 31, 2019Verified Purchase
So tired of these macho women and their egos. Is it an American thing? Not a realistic thought or word from her. Barbies with balls!
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