Likely to Die: A Novel - Hardcover

Fairstein, Linda

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684814889 ISBN 13: 9780684814889

Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD, 1999

Synopsis

"Patricia Cornwell in the Big Apple," raved the prestigious Kirkus Reviews in its starred notice of Linda Fairstein's best-selling debut, Final Jeopardy. Now Alexandra Cooper, whose job description matches Fairstein's own as Manhattan's top sex crimes prosecutor, probes a devastating case of murder at a major New York, medical center. 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 problem. With Alex and Mike temporarily far away, Maureen is more vulnerable than Alex could ever have imagined. And with the killer beginning to focus on Alex, she, herself, may soon bear the tragic label "likely to die." A powerful behind-the-scenes view of the exciting, challenging life of a Manhattan sex cnmes prosecutor, Likely to Die further confirms author Linda Fairstein's position as an international crime-writing

About this title

Review:

Fairstein just gets better. Get to know her if you dare. (Patricia Cornwell)

An authoritive and scary view from one who has battered evil and locked it away. (Patricia Cornwell)

Has the impact of early Cornwell. (Time Out)

Gripping. (Sunday Express)

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall & IBD
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684814889
• ISBN 13: 9780684814889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 393