Alexandra Cooper is an unlikely heroine. The Manhattan Assistant District Attorney in charge of the sex crimes unit is beautiful, blonde, and Ivy League educated, thanks to some sort of valve invention on the part of her cardiac surgeon father. She has a stunning and spacious apartment on the right side of the park, a second home in Martha's Vineyard and a Calvin-Klein-advert-handsome jet-setting news anchor boyfriend. Like I say, an unlikely heroine.
| Cold Hit by Linda Fairstein | |
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| Category: Crime | |
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Reviewer: Kerry King
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| Summary: Sharp, deadly and full of surprises, Linda Fairstein delivers another excellent Alexandra Cooper novel. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 413 | Date: September 2000 |
| Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks | |
| ISBN: 978-0751523201 | |
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When the body of a very wealthy art dealer and wife of one of the richest men in America is pulled out of the Hudson, tied to a ladder, Alex aided by Detective Mike Chapman are quickly on the case.
Cooper and Chapman soon find themselves knee deep in a world of beautiful and priceless treasures captained by ruthless and indomitable art dealers and gallery owners and only occasionally glimpsing the silvery wickedness that roils just beneath the elegant surface of their world.
Everything is most definitely not what it would seem and as the net begins to tighten, the danger becomes palpable and Alex begins to fear for her safety. It would not be right, at this point, to go into any further plot detail. A good crime thriller, for my money, needs to be full of surprises, twists, pikes and tucks and you won't thank me for spoiling the story in this review.
I'm not sure how many outings Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper has had now; what I can tell you is that from what I have read so far, they are all equally compelling, thrilling, fast-paced and fluidly written and Cold Hit is no exception.
I love the familiarity of the characters and the way they interact with each other; Chapman and Cooper have a "will they won't they" thing going on that is entirely and delightfully disconnected from the plot, and Cooper, Chapman and Mercer Wallace - Cooper's chief detective on her sex crimes squad - make an enviable almost familial threesome. There is something akin to coming home when you pick up a book in which the personalities are familiar to you and everyone has already established themselves in your mind. Personally, I always feel like I have more imagination to devote to the plot, rather than trying to figure out who the main characters are.
Linda Fairstein has got a good thing going. In a world of crime thriller fiction written by women, where Patricia Cornwell has gone decidedly off the boil and Kathy Reichs can only give you anthropological specimens and less thrill-of-the-chase than seems fitting for the genre, I can only in ask you give Linda Fairstein's work a go. I did, and five books later, I am still seeking out the rest.
You might also like to try Henning Mankell's The Fifth Woman, The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney and perhaps if you are feeling adventurous, Zone Defence by Petros Markaris - I say adventurous, as Markaris writes in many layers at a very lively pace - it's not what you might call a leisurely read.
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