Bad Blood

Hundreds of feet below Manhattan, a treacherous tunnel maze is inhabited by the sandhogs, teams of workers who are rebuilding New York City's deteriorating water supply system. Their dark and dangerous world turns deadly when a catastrophic explosion rips through Water Tunnel #3, sending shock waves that are felt throughout the city and inside the courtroom where Alexandra Cooper is dead-set on nailing young businessman Brendan Quillian for the murder of his wealthy wife. The blast sends Alex's case in a shattering new direction -- and pulls her and detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace underground to dig up ancient rivalries and homicidal secrets that may pull Alex in too deep.... Brimming with Linda Fairstein's trademark blend of brilliant detective work, cutting edge forensics, and electrifying legal drama, Bad Blood melds two distinctive and riveting New York domains with seamless authenticity and nerve-jangling suspense. From Publishers Weekly In the exciting ninth Alexandra Cooper legal thriller from bestseller Fairstein (after Death Dance ), the Manhattan prosecutor is confronted with the trial lawyer's greatest fear�a witness who's destroyed on the stand. When the defense attorney shows that Kate Meade, the lead witness in Cooper's circumstantial case against Brendan Quillian for the murder of his wife, Amanda, has concealed her affair with the defendant, this revelation of Meade's potential bias has a devastating effect on the prosecution's case. As Cooper struggles to recover, the case takes a whole new twist when a fatal explosion in New York City's third water tunnel, which is under construction, suggests that Amanda's death is connected with other violent acts in the Quillian family's past. While Cooper may engage in a few too many action sequences for legal purists, the crisp writing and Fairstein's enviable capacity to translate her own experience as a prosecutor into an accessible plot puts this series a cut above most entries in this crowded subgenre. (Jan.) Copyright � Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Booklist Fairstein, former chief of the Sex Crimes Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, returns with her ninth legal thriller starring prosecutor Alexandra Cooper. The author's own expertise again adds to the credibility of her fiction, in terms of courtroom banter, pacing, and those small "you couldn't make this up" details, such as the fact that shopping carts are the current favored receptacles for attorneys' case files. Her plotting is steady if formulaic. The big flaw in Fairstein's writing is that she has a tin ear when it comes to how people talk; her dialogue, often progressing in parallel phrases and clauses that are highly unlikely to occur in normal speech, is weighed down with backstory. Because she wants dialogue to do the work of narrative, she puts all manner of improbable words in her characters' mouths, thereby revealing motive and emotions. This tale starts with the trial of an upscale Manhattanite accused of murdering his wife. An explosion in the tunnels underneath the city interrupts the trial. Not surprisingly, the defendant is connected to the disaster. Again not surprisingly, Cooper must search within the tunnel system to find the answers. What works about this overly manipulative plot device, however, is that it gives Fairstein the opportunity to present some genuinely fascinating historical and engineering facts about the "city of death" far below Manhattan. Clunky in style but strong on procedural detail and background material. Connie Fletcher Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved