Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Killer Heat (Alex Cooper, Bk 10)

Killer Heat (Alex Cooper, Bk 10)
MELNELYNN avatar reviewed on + 669 more book reviews


Those who want their heroines tough, strong, and super intelligent know they've found her in Alex Cooper. She's a D.A. in Manhattan and as we meet her again in the tenth offering by Linda Fairstein, she's enjoying victory. It was a tough rape case but Alex won it (and incurred the animus of Latin Princes gang members along the way).

Nonetheless, her winning feeling is soon lost as she is notified that the body of a young woman has been found in an abandoned building. Now, author Fairstein knows this territory well as she once headed the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's Office, and she minces no words.

After viewing the victim, Alex is offered a cigar by Mike, a detective with the Manhattan North Homicide Squad. Despite the oppressive August heat he puffs on a stogie and encourages her to take one with this advice, ""The stench from that corpse is going to stay in your brain for weeks unless you infuse it right away with something more powerful. Why do you think I've always got a couple of these in my pocket?"

As stated, Alex is tough and while she may be able to get over the sickening smell of death, what she cannot get over is another beaten woman's body found and then a third.

Being directed to catch the killer before the city is deadened by fear is one thing, trying to stay alive when those gang members want revenge is quite another.

Since the introduction of Alex Cooper in 1996 Ms. Fairstein has turned out nine additional thrillers, each more exciting than the last. Tony Award winner Blair Brown gives another sterling performance in her narration of this spine-tingling novel.