Search - Final Jeopardy (Alexandra Cooper, Bk1)

So this is how the series starts. It's worth sticking with the stilted dialogue because the storytelling is strong, the characters are clearly drawn and delightful (the cast is quite large), and over the life of the series, Fairstein grows into quite a good writer.

Very enjoyable -- a cut above the usual police/legal procedural. The first in the Alexandra Cooper series. Recommended!

This is a great story - not only a mystery, but intrigue, some romance, and lots of character details.

This is written so well I read it almost straight through. Faristein writes with an insiders view.

First Linda Fairstein book I've read, but it won't be the last!

Lots of twists and turns. A sex crimes prosecutor awakens to shocking news... news of her own death. But the actual victim is a hollywood starlet. Fun reading.

This is written so well I read it almost straight through. Faristein writes with an insiders view.

From Publishers Weekly: "The crusading longtime chief of Manhattan's Sex Crimes Prosecutions Unit brings to her exciting first novel the same passion and insights into the criminal and crime-busting minds that marked her memoir, Sexual Violence (1994). Fairstein also brings herself to the novel-or at least an alter ego of a narrator, Alexandra Cooper, who's also a middle-aged blonde heading the borough's prosecution of sex offenders. Cooper's typical day of counseling victims and working with the NYPD on sex crimes would probably keep readers fascinated, but her latest problem-the shooting murder of glamorous movie star Isabella Lascar at Cooper's getaway home on Martha's Vineyard-pitches the plot at high intensity right away. Though Cooper is warned by the DA not to play cop, she and homicide detective Mike Chapman, who's assigned to bodyguard her, work together unofficially to solve the crime, carrying on a sort of anti-romance all the while. Fairstein isn't a gifted stylist-her dialogue is as wooden as a judge's gavel-and the details of Cooper's professional and personal lives drive the story forward with more vigor than the murder investigation does. Some readers will be disappointed, too, that Cooper, like any victim, has to be rescued in the end by her fiercely protective and ingenious friends on the NYPD. But then this heroine's greatest appeal lies in the warmth of her friendships, the humanness of her mistakes and her unswerving devotion to protecting the next female from harm. As a woman with grave responsibilities who still puts her pantyhose on one leg at a time, she makes a memorable debut." Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --

Manhattan's top sex crimes prosecuter wakes up to shocking news in the newspaper headlines: her own murder. - Good book that keeps you thinking.

Alexandra Cooper, Manhattan's top sex-crimes prosecutor, awakens one morning to shocking news: a tabloid headline announcing her own brutal murder. But the actual victim was Isabella Lascar, the Holloywood film star who sought refuge at Alex's Martha Vineyard's retreat. Was Isabella slain by a stalker--or was Alex herself the intended target???

Alexandra Cooper, Manhattan's top sex crimes prosecutor, awakens one morning to shocking news: a tabloid headline announcing her own brutal murder. The the actual victim was Isabella Lascar, the Hollywood film star who sought refuge at Alex's Martha's Vineyard retreat. Was Isabella targeted by a stalker, or - mistaken for Alex - was she in the wrong place at the wrong time?