Likely to Die - Softcover

Fairstein, Linda

3.88

5,943 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671014935 ISBN 13: 9780671014933

Publisher: Pocket Books, 1998

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It's 5:38 on a March morning when Alex's phone jars her awake. Homicide detective Mike Chapman is at the scene of a sexual assault and murder. It's a perfect case for Alex and her special skills. And it's certain to be a high-profile case because the victim was a neurosurgeon at Mid-Manhattan Medical Center, the oldest and largest hospital in New York City. Dr. Gemma Dogen was found barely breathing, on the floor of her blood-soaked office. It was too late to save her. In cop parlance, she was a "likely to die." The problems Alex's team faces are immense, starting with too many possible suspects. Not only have Alex's colleagues prosecuted some of the hospital's employees and patients in the past - any one of them could be the killer - but the more than fifteen-hundred-bed complex and its medical college are connected to the Stuyvesant Psychiatric Center, and all three buildings sit on top of a maze of underground tunnels. Scores of transients now populate the tunnels, putting on white coats or scrubs to enter and roam the hospital's corridors as if they were licensed professionals. Anybody could have been near Gemma Dogen's office the night of the murder. While Alex and Mike and police colleague Mercer Wallace step up their search for the killer, Alex must also supervise other cases: the taxi driver who stalks an emergency room physician; a rapist who attacks a comatose young woman; a rabbi who demands a peculiar kind of service from his housekeepers. But it is the Dogen case that disturbs Alex's dreams. The daughter of a cardiologist, Alex had always revered the medical profession. Now she begins to question her own biases. And what about the new man in her life? She met him at anelegant dinner party that is typical of her affluent Upper East Side lifestyle, but is he, too, somehow involved in this case? Policewoman Maureen Forester may discover some of the shocking answers when she volunteers to check into the hospital as a decoy with a supposed neurological

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Review:

Patricia Cornwell An authoritative and scary view from one who has battled evil and locked it away. Fairstein just gets better. Get to know her if you dare. Hilma Wolitzer New York Daily News A first-rate mystery novel by someone who writes about what she knows and truly knows about what she writes. Long Island Newsday (NY) As real as tomorrow's tabloid headlines, as gritty as a police stakeout, as graphic as an autopsy, Likely to Die is a fearsomely authentic whodunit that manages to raise important issues about the nature, and the horror, of sex crimes. Chicago Tribune This gritty, harsh book has a strong sense of authenticity. The New York Times Book Review Stylish...engaging...Linda Fairstein's second novel takes its title from police slang for a crime victim whose death is inevitable. As in her previous novel, Final Jeopardy, the author places a smart and driven Manhattan prosecutor named Alexandra Cooper at the center of the action. People Step aside, girls. Here comes Manhattan sex creimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper in a red Escada suit, trailing a cloud of Chanel No. 5....Fairstein gives her sleek -- and single -- D.A. a whopping whodunit....There are plenty of suspects to keep Alex clicking along in her Manolo Blahnik heels...and sizzling sexual tension between Alex and NYPD detective Mike Chapman. Susan Issacs This is no I-guess-this-must-be-what-it's-like fantasy of how the criminal justice system operates. Final Jeopardy is a smart and gutsy insider's whodunit. But the novel has more than authenticity going for it. It's got a terrific protagonist. Alexandra Cooper is a tough, dedicated assistant district attorney and a warmhearted, funny, and insightful dame. Linda Fairstein has done one hell of a job. People A whopping whodunit...With its taut plot and classy setting, Likely to Die is an uptown act.

From the Publisher:

New York Times Book Review 8/24/97
In murder, as in real estate, location is everything. So when a prominent doctor is found raped and stabbed in her office at a prestigious New York hospital, she gets a final accolade: the murder makes page 1 of the newspapers.

"Likely to Die," Linda Fairstein's second novel, takes its title from police slang for a crime victim whose death is inevitable. As in her previous novel, "Final Jeopardy," the author (who works a day job as head of the Manhattan District Attorney's sex crimes unit) places a smart and driven Manhattan prosecutor named Alexandra Cooper at the center of the action. Since Dr. Gemma Dogen was a "single, professional woman, no children, no pets, no one to depend on her for contact," Alex is left to discover the victim through her work-which makes a suspect out of everyone at the hospital, staff and patients alike, not to mention all the vagrants who hang out in the tunnels beneath the building. Such a wide net might daunt some investigators, but not Fairstein's fearless heroine, whose portraits of her boss and fellow prosecutors are as engaging as her asides about history and neurology. Throw in a little romance, a hurried trip to England and a valentine to Martha's Vineyard, and the result is a stylish and oddly antic book, despite the gruesome nature of its subject. -Madeleine Blais

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