For Sale

1st edition.~ Cloth, dj, F/F. 392pp. a nice fine copy, small mark to fep. ~ Good crime fiction, written by an author with good insight into the legal system.

0684814889 1997 Book Club edition; edge wear, rubbing to dust jacket, light edge wear, bumps to boards; Linda Fairstein's second novel, Likely to Die, returns to the gritty, chilling world of the popular heroine of Final Jeopardy, Alexandra Cooper. Cooper's job description matches Fairstein's own: Manhattan's top sex-crimes prosecutor. And, as Fairstein notes in the acknowledgments to Likely to Die, ''every crime in this book is based on an actual event.'' Renowned neurosurgeon Gemma Dogen is designated ''likely to die'' by the police after she is found barely breathing in her blood-soaked office at a major New York medical center, having been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and left for dead. And, in fact, it is too late to save her; she doesn't survive much longer. Because of the nature of the crime, NYPD homicide detective Mike Chapman calls Alex in to help with the investigation. As she begins to assemble a task force, Alex learns that security at the hospital is lax at best, making it possible for Dogen to have been murdered by virtually anyone who passed through Mid-Manhattan's doors. Compounding the problem are the hundreds of homeless people living in a maze of tunnels underneath the hospital who freely roam its corridors. Hoping to narrow the field of suspects, Alex starts to sift through the details of Gemma Dogen's life. But as Alex frantically tries to piece together this deadly puzzle, she finds herself in a heart-pounding race against time when the murderer targets her as ''likely to die.''

C O N D I T I O N : Very Good. Book very slightly cocked with some creasing in spine. N O T E S: Paperback. Size: A Format (Approx. 4¼" x 7"). C O N T E N T S : The days of Assistant D. A. Alexandra Cooper often start off badly, but she's never faced the morning by reading her own obituary before. ||| || |

C O N D I T I O N : Very Good+ - in Very Good+ DJ. N O T E S: Hardback. DJ. 1st Ed. C O N T E N T S : (Originally £14.99)432pp. ||| || |

C O N D I T I O N : Very Good - in Very Good DJ. N O T E S: Hardback. DJ. C O N T E N T S : Smart, sexy, Manhattan assistant DA Alexandra Cooper--hero of Linda Fairstein's increasingly popular series--is taking her latest murder case very personally in The Deadhouse. Lola Dakota, abused wife and brilliant university professor, wouldn't cooperate when Cooper wanted to charge her ex-husband with assault. So when she's murdered, he's the logical suspect--except that he had been arrested just before the murder. So Alex needs another suspect. Unable to protect Lola alive, Alex is determined to find the killer and bring him to justice. All she has to go on is a scrap of paper in the murdered woman's pocket with the words "The Deadhouse" on it, along with a series of numbers. Deciphering the clue leads Alex and cop Mike Chapman to an abandoned gothic hospital on New York's Roosevelt Island, where smallpox victims went to die a century ago. Because of its history, the Deadhouse held a special attraction for Lola and for several of her university colleagues; and, as it turns out, almost all these deftly drawn minor characters had a reason to want Lola dead. Illuminating their personalities and motives gives Fairstein an opportunity to skewer the academic infighting that goes on at an elite Ivy League school. (Originally £9.99) 400pp. ||| || |

C O N D I T I O N : Very Good. N O T E S: Paperback. C O N T E N T S : When Linda Fairstein describes the route which Alexandra Cooper takes from the District Attorney's office to NYPD headquarters you know she's walked that way many times herself. I took the shortcut over to One Police Plaza, cutting behind the Metropolitan Correctional Center and alongside the staggeringly expensive new federal courthouse, which made our digs, complete with oversized rodents and roaches that obviously thrived on Combat, look like judicial facilities in some third world country. Like her fictional counterpart Fairstein is a Manhattan assistant district attorney in charge of a sex crimes unit. As in Final Jeopardy and Likely to Die Fairstein surrounds her somewhat unlikely heroine (a beautiful 35-year-old blonde with an Ivy League education, a house in Martha's Vineyard and an affection for betting on quiz show answers at cop bars) with a wealth of procedural detail. The cold hit of the title, for example, refers to a computer match between DNA samples left by a rapist in a recent case with evidence from an older crime. With her trusty cop sidekicks Mike Chapman (who eats everything in sight and drops wisecracks like crumbs) and Mercer Wallace (who is big and can take a bullet meant for Alex without flinching) Cooper is working on two major cases--a serial rapist who has suddenly decided to come out of hiding and a couple of murders linked to the nasty underground world of fine art sales. But she also has time to give her fellow sex crime prosecutors advice on how to handle everything from a man shooting videos up women's skirts at a Star Trek convention to a guy who takes his love for racehorses well past the legal limits. (Originally £6.99) 416pp. ||| || |

Very Good 3/31/2005 6:06:08 AM 3/8/2006 2:15:55 PM 1

Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good-. 5/9/2003 8/9/2007 5:40:05 PM 1