good mystery
Builds to Climax

It's August in New York, and the only thing that's hotter than the pavement is Manhattan D.A. Alex Cooper's professional and personal life. Just as she's claiming an especially gratifying victory in a rape case, she gets the call: the body of a young woman has been found in an abandoned building. The brutality of the murder is disturbing enough, but when a second body, beaten and disposed of in exactly same manner, is found off the Belt Parkway, the city's top brass want the killer found fast, before the tabloids can start churning out ghoulish serial killer headlines.

From the Library Description:
Manhattan D.A. Alex Cooper investigates the murders of three victims while dodging infuriated gang members packing heat. Her interrogation skills lead to someone with a twisted obsession concerning the military, and things grow increasingly dangerous when the chase leads to a chain of small, abandoned islands around New York harbor.

I thought this was a solid police and prosecutor procedural, done in a mostly believable way with likable characters. The graphic violence was not too explicit or lengthy even though the killer was a rapist who tortured his victims. Fairstein was a prosecutor of sex crimes in New York and the details she included about the legal process and the victims come across as realistic. The story started a little slow but the suspense grew and had an exciting ending. There was some interesting history of the islands around New York City that was new to me. Overall, I enjoyed it. ( )

I docked half a star from Killer Heat bcause Alex Cooper saw a chain around the killer's neck and didn't even THINK of using it as a weapon. (After all, Ms. Fairstein could have had Alex decide that the height difference between them made it too risky for her to reach for it while his back was turned. Hasn't Ms. Cooper ever been taught to see the weapon in ordinary objects to aid in self-defense?) Alex did ultimately defend herself, but I'm with Mike Chapman about her aim.

Other than that, I found the book's plot and subplots interesting, especially:

Is there a serial killer running around?
If there is, what attracts him to his victims?
The military history we get to learn
The cold rape case being tried -- the contrast between what victims endured in the 1970s and now
Alex being stalked by gang members whose leader she got jailed for raping a 12-year-old
Loopholes and the sheer stupidity involved in the system that's supposed to protect the public from captured sexual predators (I'm smelling a possible future lawsuit from the victims' families) ( )

When the bound and tortured body of a young woman is discovered in an abandoned Manhattan ferry terminal District Attorney Alexandra Cooper and Detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace start hunting for her killer. At the same time Cooper is also prosecuting a man who raped a woman in the 1970’s but who can only now be brought to justice due to DNA evidence and she’s also made it on to a gangster’s hit list and undergoes some scary moments due to that.

I’ve read all of the previous novels featuring Alex, Mike and Mercer and I must say that meeting up with them again is a bit like catching up with old friends. The strongest element to this series has, for me, always been these three characters who are particularly believable in their respective roles. For 25 years (until 2002) Linda Fairstein was New York’s chief prosecutor of sex crimes cases and I think that first hand knowledge shows in the legal details and the depictions of the cases being carefully constructed which always seem very realistic to me. It also influences the empathy with which the books treat victims of brutal sex crimes. This book has an especially poignant sub plot about a woman who was raped in the 70’s and her rapist went free because she couldn’t prove she had fought him. It really made me think about how far we’ve come in a relatively short space of time.

The friendship between the three is also something I enjoy, primarily because there’s never been a hint of unresolved sexual tension between any of them. They’re just staunch friends of the kind that people in the real world often are and people in fictiondom seldom seem to be and it makes a nice change from alcoholic loners or characters looking longingly at each other but never doing anything about it.

The plot of Killer Heat is a little disjointed. The sub plot concerning Alex being targeted by the members of a gang whose leader she had recently successfully prosecuted seemed a bit ridiculous, especially as it wasn’t really resolved (it just sort of stopped somewhere before the end of the book). The main story about the hunt for the killer of several woman relied heavily on long descriptions of a series of locations as well as more knowledge of American history than I’m ever likely to have so I did have to re-read a few parts before they made sense. I even resorted to Wikipedia once or twice which made me ponder what on earth we did before the entire world’s trivia was available at the end of one’s fingertips in the middle of the night.

Overall though the plot was resolved very satisfactorily and I was glad I met up once again with these characters. Fairstein’s personal knoweldge of the world she writes about brings an air of authenticity to this story in which the victims of crime are just as important, if not more so, than the perpetrators and investigators. I often think that victims get ignored or are depicted as basic stereotypes and this book definitely doesn’t do either of those things. ( )

10th book in the Alex Cooper series, this novel takes the Manhattan ADA takes to Staten Island and the badly decomposed female body. The victim proves to be the first of a number of women in uniform targeted by the murderer, who may have military ties in his past. Twist and turns take Alex and gang to Governor's Island and its military history. I enjoy this series--but this book had less of the New York City history that I really enjoy. 3 out of 5 stars. ( )