Bad blood

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher
Scibner
Publication Date
[2007]
Language
English

Description

Bad Blood finds Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper deeply involved in a complicated, high-profile homicide case. Defendant Brendan Quillian, a prominent young businessman, is charged with the brutal strangulation of his beautiful young wife, Amanda. His conviction is not a certainty: Quillian was conveniently out of town on the day of the killing, and he has hired a formidable defense attorney who seems one step ahead of Cooper as the trial opens. But with the help of detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, she is confident she can prove Quillian paid a hit man to commit the crime.

Halfway through the trial, a major catastrophe alters the course of Alex's case. A cataclysmic ex-plosion rips through New York City's Water Tunnel #3, a spectacular feat of modern engineering that will be completed years in the future. Carved through bedrock six hundred feet underground, the tunnel will replace a vital artery in the city's rapidly deteriorating water supply system. Was the blast caused by terrorism? Political retribution? Or was it merely an accident? Cooper is quickly drawn into the trag-edy when she discovers a strange connection linking Brendan Quillian to the tunnel workers killed in the explosion.

At the same time, Alex meets a mysterious, handsome stranger. Should she get to know him better? Before the answer is clear, she is pulled back into the case, which is becoming more dangerous by the hour. She and Chapman descend deep into the earth to penetrate the subterranean universe of the sandhogs, as the brotherhood of tunnel workers are colorfully known. Their probe soon leads to another murder victim, whose blood may hold the key to Cooper's mesmerizingly complex case. One closely held secret reveals another, and soon Alex discovers that only by unraveling ancient rivalries among sandhog families will she be able to solve the murder of Amanda Quillian -- and save her own life as well.

A riveting tale of up-to-the-minute urban intrigue, Bad Blood is rich with New York City lore and fascinating legal insights that only Fairstein, Manhattan's former sex crimes prosecutor, can deliver. Told in her signature authentic style, Bad Blood is packed with the same twists and turns that made her last novel, Death Dance, a runaway bestseller and that never fail to thrill her legions of devoted readers.

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ISBN
9781416521518
9780743287487

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Published Reviews

Booklist Review

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 2006 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

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.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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Library Journal Review

An explosion that rocks the construction site of Water Tunnel #3 in New York also rocks the courtroom where Alexandra Cooper aims to prove that a young businessman did in his wife. With a national tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

An explosion far beneath Manhattan's surface turns prosecutor Alexandra Cooper's ninth case (Death Dance, 2006, etc.) into a free-for-all with roots sunk deep in the bedrock of the past. Did Brendan Quillian strangle his wealthy wife, Amanda, who'd been making serious noises about leaving him, so that he could keep her money and his management job with her late father's real-estate empire? Lemuel Howell III, Brendan's silky attorney, insists that his client will be vindicated, and his cross-examination of Alex's first few witnesses certainly seems to justify his confidence. But the case is rocked by a blast in Water Tunnel #3, a construction project 60 stories underground designed to bring water to an increasingly thirsty New York--a blast that kills Brendan's brother Duke, a sandhog who worked there. Alex, who had never given Brendan's family of working-class Irish immigrants a second thought, is suddenly wrapped up in their dirty laundry. There's news from Brendan's sister Trish of a long-simmering feud between the Quillians and the Hassetts, who toiled alongside them in Tunnel #3. There's the revelation that 20 years ago, Bex Hassett, Trisha's best friend, was strangled in Pelham Bay Park during Brendan and Amanda's honeymoon. And a macabre new detail has surfaced: Somebody cut off Duke's finger before the explosion finished him. Before Alex can fit Amanda's murder into this decades-long pattern of violence and hatred, a courtroom surprise sends the case hurtling off in still another direction, and the only certainty is that it'll end deep in the bowels of New York's tunnel system. Fairstein's latest is as generously plotted as ever, with a series of fascinatingly grim locales that suit her gifts perfectly--even if she can't resist whispering historical sidelights into your ear with every change of scene. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Booklist Reviews

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. ((Reviewed November 15, 2006)) Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.

Copyright 2006 Booklist Reviews.
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Library Journal Reviews

An explosion that rocks the construction site of Water Tunnel #3 in New York also rocks the courtroom where Alexandra Cooper aims to prove that a young businessman did in his wife. With a national tour. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews

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.)

[Page 35]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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