Bad Blood (Alexandra Cooper Series #9)

From Barnes & Noble

In her ninth fiction outing, Manhattan prosecutor Alexandra Cooper is tangled in troubles. Her attempt to secure a murder conviction against high-profile young business mogul Brendan Quillian has been jeopardized by the revelation that Cooper's lead witness has been sitting on an embarrassing secret. Then, a deadly explosion at New York City's third water tunnel complicates the case even further. As Alexandra wades into the mess, she begins to wonder if the strangulation of Quillian's wife was only the beginning of his misdeeds…

Publishers Weekly

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.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews

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 suither gifts perfectly-even if she can't resist whispering historical sidelights into your ear with every change of scene.