The Hatfields and McCoys go Underground in Manhattan.... Sure...
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Author: Linda Fairstein
Title: Bad Blood Genre: mystery Alexandra Cooper's latest high-profile case isn't going well; not well at all. The trial of wealthy Manhattanite Brendan Quillian, accused of hiring persons unknown to murder his wife, has hit snag after snag - and the defense attorney hasn't even started putting on his case yet. A short break in the trial caused by a deadly underground explosion turns considerably longer, however, when one of the dead workmen is identified as Quillian's brother. Brother? Cooper and company didn't even know he had siblings! This new development exposes a side of Brendan his high-society friends never knew existed: the Quillian family business isn't real estate; they're "sandhogs" - one of the families of tunnel rats who have for generations built New York City's vast underground infrastructure. With all these heretofore unknown family ties to investigate, Cooper's team springs into action (after a weekend sojourn to her "cottage" on the Cape for a friend's wedding). And, sure enough, they uncover some dirty Quillian laundry, not to mention a - tada! - cold case with the same M. O. Even so, the events of the next morning's court appearance are still a surprise to all concerned - a way BIG surprise. Rest assured that the team of Alex, Mike, and Mercer is on the case, Bad Bloodor not - and also rest assured that, sooner or later, long-legged blonde Alex Cooper will end up in a place where • it's dark • cell phone reception is lousy • her life is in grave danger It wouldn't be an Alex Cooper courtroom drama any other way! The ninth in Linda Fairstein's Alex Cooper series finds the leggy blonde heroine on familiar ground, trying a high-profile court case featuring murder and mayhem on the twenty-six square miles we know as Manhattan. All of the other elements of the novel will seem comfortably familiar to fans of the series as well, right down to the inclusion of three or four snippets of off-the-wall trivia disguised as "Final Jeopardy" questions (and accompanied by twenty-dollar bets). Cooper's wisecracking Homicide Detective buddy Mike Chapman is, of course, present and accounted for - his recent bereavement seemingly having little effect on his rather dismissive and chauvinistic attitude toward the ultimate girly-girl ADA with whom he works. Detective Mercer Wallace lends his usual quiet hand as well. No surprises there, as Fairstein has done little to update Cooper's working environment over the course of the series. Her Cape Cod friends are all accounted for as well, lounging about their "shabby" digs on a strip of some of the most expensive real estate in the country. As in most of her recent installments in the series, Fairstein places big chunks of the action in a corner of her hometown that isn't particularly well known to most of the millions who stride the streets of the Big Apple. This time, she's headed below decks - down below the subway lines, into the vast subterranean warren of tunnels and pipes that form the city's circulatory system. Utilities, water, sewer, storm drains - it's all down there. Beginning with trip to a water tunnel a tenth of a mile underground and ending at an abandoned subway station, Cooper spends more time underground in a week than some coal miners. Her exposition on the history of the city's underground network and the families of sandhogs - yes, they're real people - is a fascinating look at the engineering marvels that keep the country's largest city from dying of thirst in the dark. On the other end of the fascination scale, Fairstein's latest is a rather pedestrian tale that, midway through, manages to clamber onto the already overloaded cold-case-solved-by-old-DNA bandwagon. With the exception of one rather fascinating red herring in the story of blood evidence, there's nothing new or exciting in the solution of the story, just as there's nothing particularly new or diverting about the case. Given that a major thread of Fairstein's tale concerns a fiery underground feud between two sandhog families, the manner in which that feud simply disappears from the narrative is disconcerting, as is the introduction of a triple murder that just... doesn't seem important. Fairstein's main character - the "slumming" ADA daughter of a filthy-rich family - is in fine form this time, though she doesn't bother to regale readers with a trip to the barre - just to a few bars. It's actually rather amusing to see Fairstein write about the lawyer watching her socialite witness on the stand, giving details of a life with which her jury - "a mix of working- and lower-class New Yorkers" - could scarcely be expected to identify. It's even more amusing when later, Cooper waxes ecstatic about family dinners at Lutèce: talk about your inability to identify... On a similar topic, someone needs to tell Fairstein that the beer that blue-collar guys drink doesn't come in sixteen-ounce bottles - it's twelve ounces or quarts. Too, Fairstein has some continuity problems this time out: either that, or the rich and super-rich use disposable digital cameras. Fairstein's latest is up to the standards of the previous entries in the series, which isn't necessarily a good thing. The storyline is predictable, with the same structure as the previous eight Alex Cooper novels. The interaction between Chapman and Cooper continues to baffle me - how someone as sensitive to the needs of women as the lead prosecutor of the sex crimes division could stand her interaction with Chapman never ceases to puzzle me. Most women I know would have clocked him years ago. Overall, it's neither very mysterious nor very interesting, and Fairstein's failure to tie up some major loose threads ought to leave her readers scratching their heads. all content copyright © 2014 by scmrak
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