Likely to Die
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- CHF 10.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
The real-life work of sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein brought "riveting authenticity" (Vanity Fair) to her bestselling debut novel, Final Jeopardy. Now Fairstein's fictional counterpart -- smart and savvy assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper -- returns in "[a] Grisham-esque page turner" (Time) that puts Alex in the line of fire.
New York City's oldest and largest medical center is the scene of a ghastly attack: top neurosurgeon Gemma Dogen is found in her blood-soaked office, where she has been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and designated by the cops as a "likely to die." By the time Alex has plunged into the case, it's a high-profile, media-infested murder investigation with a growing list of suspects from among those who roam the hospital's labyrinthine halls. As Alex's passion to find the killer intensifies, she discovers this hospital is not a place of healing but of deadly peril -- and that she is the next target for lethal violence.
A high-style thriller that sweeps from Manhattan to London to Martha's Vineyard, Likely to Die is an exhilarating tale from a justice system insider and provocative novelist.
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Several notorious recent crimes perpetrated in New York City and elsewhere inform Fairstein's follow-up to last year's Final Jeopardy, foremost among them the murder and assumed rape of a prominent Manhattan physician in her hospital office. When Fairstein, who's head of the Manhattan DA's sex crimes unit, sticks to the basics of these cases and the prosecutorial and police procedures used to handle them, she writes with an authority that crime buffs will relish. But Fairstein has already chronicled the life of a sex-crimes prosecutor in her 1994 memoir, Sexual Violence. Here, she seems to be mythologizing her life and work: returning narrator Alexandra Cooper is Fairstein's apparent alter ego (from job to personality to hair color), and too often the book feels self-aggrandizing. Whatever talent at fiction Fairstein possessed she apparently drained in writing the superior Final Jeopardy. The investigation into the doctor's killing unfolds with minimal suspense. There are a few false leads, flatly presented, a couple of cliched attempts at tension--a car tries to run Cooper down; she receives a threatening note--and a villain who, when revealed, seems arbitrary. The circuitous road to justice is cluttered with story debris, including a lackadaisical side-trip to England and pedantic lecturing on criminal justice issues by both Cooper and the cops she works with, plus juvenile banter among these characters and tips on how a stylish ADA does her hair and nails. Major ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates; Mystery Guild main selection; author tour.
