{"id":2192,"date":"2017-09-05T17:12:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-06T00:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2192"},"modified":"2017-09-05T17:12:18","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T00:12:18","slug":"beware-the-beasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/?p=2192","title":{"rendered":"Beware the beasts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson<\/p>\n

DEADFALL. By Linda Fairstein. Penguin Audio. Read by Barbara Rosenblat. 11 \u00bd hours; 10 CDs. $40.<\/p>\n

\"deadfall\"<\/a>Alex Cooper is back \u2013 sort of \u2013 after her kidnapping ordeal, but she\u2019s supposed to be on leave from work, and she\u2019s struggling emotionally.<\/p>\n

A quiet time of healing is not in the works, however. Leaving a fund-raising gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Coop hears a man call her name. Before she can respond, her boss, District Attorney Paul Battaglia, has been shot twice in the head by someone in a passing car, and he\u2019s dying in her arms.<\/p>\n

As if all that weren\u2019t sufficiently traumatic, especially for someone already in a fragile state of mind, Coop quickly realizes that she\u2019s high on the list of suspects in her boss\u2019 death. And far from showing any professional courtesy, some of the investigators seem bent on treating her more harshly than they would anyone else.<\/p>\n

Writing what she knows and doing it well, Linda Fairstein has had great success with her long-running series of crime\/police detective novels starring Alexandra Cooper, head of the sex crimes unit for the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

In real life, Fairstein held that position herself for many years, and she draws on her own experiences as well as her deep knowledge of Manhattan.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s developed a winning formula for these novels, although there\u2019s always plenty of fresh material: new villains, interesting plots, developments in Coop\u2019s personal life and new settings that lend themselves to description and historical exposition.<\/p>\n

This time, the storyline gives Fairstein an opportunity to educate her readers about global wildlife preservation, the lucrative and illegal trade in ivory and other goods, people who pay big bucks to kill unusual and endangered animals, exclusive hunting preserves including the one where Justice Antonin Scalia died and the Bronx zoo, among other interesting information.<\/p>\n

Anyone who knows Coop knows she\u2019s not going to follow orders to stay out of the investigation into Battaglia\u2019s murder, and her boyfriend, NYPD Detective Mike Chapman, is likely to be aiding and abetting her efforts.<\/p>\n

There were times in Deadfall <\/em>when I got a little impatient with Coop\u2019s recalcitrance, as well as her self-pity, but as one does with an old friend, I forgave her and went on with the story. It was worth it in the long run.<\/p>\n

Fairstein\u2019s Alex Cooper novels work especially well as audio books. The long sections detailing, for example, the history of the Bronx Zoo are not what we expect as dialogue in most novels and might make some readers impatient. But when Barbara Rosenblat reads them, they make for fascinating listening and add to the enjoyment of the story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson DEADFALL. By Linda Fairstein. Penguin Audio. Read by Barbara Rosenblat. 11 \u00bd hours; 10 CDs. $40. Alex Cooper is back \u2013 sort of \u2013 after her kidnapping ordeal, but she\u2019s supposed to be on leave from work, and she\u2019s struggling emotionally. A quiet time of healing is not in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,590,5],"tags":[987,425,613,184],"class_list":["post-2192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audio-books","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-mysteries","tag-alexandra-cooper","tag-detective-fiction","tag-linda-fairstein","tag-mysteries-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2194,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions\/2194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}