KILLER HEAT
Linda Fairstein
Doubleday
Legal Thriller
ISBN: 9780385523974

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview –– March 21, 2008

Linda Fairstein is one of America's foremost legal experts on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, and ran the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan for more than 20 years. Since 1996, Fairstein has been writing a series of novels revolving around Alexandra Cooper, her fictitious alter ego, who has peeled back the veil to reveal the methods by which the D.A.’s office solves such crimes and the madness that serves as the catalyst for them. Fairstein’s latest effort takes the series to new territory and to new heights.

KILLER HEAT puts Cooper on the trail of a particularly vicious killer who is brutalizing and murdering young women, and then unceremoniously dumping their bodies in out-of-the-way places in and around Manhattan. Initially it appears that there is little, if anything, to connect these ladies to one another, aside from the fact that they apparently have been unfortunate enough to intersect with the assailant, who seems to come and go at will.

But as those familiar with the real world of a District Attorney's office are all too aware, the workload is equal parts practicing law and juggling cases. Accordingly, it happens that Cooper's investigation occurs just as she is in the midst of trying a case that hopefully will bring long-overdue closure to a victim who has waited for over three decades for justice. Kerry Hastings was a 22-year-old graduate student when she was viciously raped. Floyd Warren, her assailant, was captured, but jumped bail and fled before his case came to trial. Now, some 35 years later, with her attacker back in custody, Hastings is about to get her day in court, and Cooper will have the opportunity to ensure that justice is no longer denied.

As Cooper finishes her final preparations for Warren's trial, however, common elements linking the victims of her other cases to each other slowly begin to manifest themselves under the heat of persistent investigation. The most intriguing of these is that the murderer seems to have a fascination with military memorabilia. This gains further significance when Cooper discovers that the victims were all wearing uniforms, or clothing similar to military garb, when they first went missing. But an even more crucial clue is that they all appear to have a connection to Jimmy or Kiernan Dylan, a father-son team who own a couple of bars and have a penchant for serving attractive women who are too young to imbibe.

The victims frequented their establishments, so at first Cooper and her investigators feel that one or both of them are involved. However, it takes an arrest and information from a totally unexpected source before she realizes how wrong she is --- and yet how close she is to finding the killer. When another young woman suddenly goes missing, Cooper begins a race against time. She combs a desolate and foreboding abandoned landscape outside of the urban caverns of Manhattan, searching for a madman in the midst of the fury of a tumultuous rainstorm, as the life of yet another innocent victim --- and that of Cooper’s --- hangs in the balance.

It is more than fair to assume that even if you think you know Manhattan, Fairstein will take you to places you never have been and probably never knew existed within a half hour’s journey of familiar landmarks. Fans of the Cooper novels and police procedurals in general will enjoy the D.A.’s dogged police work and the ultimate uncovering of the perpetrator’s identity, which is the result of equal combinations of hard work and lucky but plausible breaks.

Perhaps the most significant aspect of KILLER HEAT, however, is the activity surrounding Kerry Hastings, which is based on a real-world occurrence in which the victim, Kathleen Ham, ultimately obtained her measure of justice. It was Ham who asked Fairstein to tell her story and to whom the book is dedicated. Considering the author’s background, and her ability to intertwine the events of this world with her fictitious one, it is no wonder that she and Cooper have become exponentially better with each entry in this series. KILLER HEAT is no exception.

    --- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

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