Review:- Linda FAIRSTEIN – “Bad Blood”

Publ: 2007
My own copy (From a Charity shop)
ISBN: 978 0 7515 3807 6
Genre: Crime, Forensics, Courtroom drama,
Pages: 452p
Found by Serendipity
Rating: ***** **


What led you to pick up this book?
The plot sounded good in the blurb

Describe the plot without giving anything away.
Public prosecutor, Alexandra Cooper, has a tough case to prosecute. Brendan Quillian, a wealthy businessman from the Upper East Side, has been charged with hiring an assassin to kill his wife, but the evidence is flimsy and the defendant has one of the most successful defence lawyers on his side. Then an explosion in one of the tunnels being built to secure Manhattan's water supply kills Quillan's brother, one of the construction workers. Alex, together with Detectives Chapman and Mercer, discovers that Quillan's upbringing is very different from what they'd assumed, and within the cupboard of his estranged family there are many skeletons, not all of them metaphorical. In a cliff-hanging whodunnit, Linda Fairstein takes the reader deep beneath the New York streets...

Alex Cooper Series
1. Final Jeopardy (1994)
2. Likely to Die (1997)
3. Cold Hit (1999)
4. The Deadhouse (2001)
5. The Bone Vault (2003)
6. The Kills (2004)
7. Entombed (2005)
8. Death Dance (2006)
9. Bad Blood (2007)
10. Killer Heat (2008)
11. Lethal Legacy (2009)

What did you think of the characters / style?
Written by an expert in the field the plot is excellent and the style readable but the characterisation somehow lacks a certain depth. Ironically despite Fairstein’s own expertise and her undoubted knowledge of the subject she fails to make the characters live in my mind. A shame because if I had more sympathy with the characters I would undoubtedly want to rush through the series. as it is I feel I can take them or leave them.

What did you like most about the book?
The fascinating genetic information and the court room scenes.

Was there anything you didn't like about the book?
Instead of making the book more thrilling I felt the dramatic action side of the book actually detracted from the plot.

Thoughts on the book jacket / cover.
Average

Would I recommend it?
Not sure.


LINDA FAIRSTEIN, America's foremost prosecutor of crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, has run the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan for more than two decades. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first novel, Final Jeopardy, which introduced the character Alexandra Cooper, was published in 1996 to critical and commercial acclaim, followed in 1997 by Likely to Die, which also achieved international bestseller status. Her nonfiction book, Sexual Violence, was a New York Times notable book in 1994. She lives with her husband in Manhattan.