Likely to Die (Alexandra Cooper Mysteries) (Alexandra Cooper)

by Linda Fairstein

It's 5:38 on a March morning when Alex's phone jars her awake. Homicide detective Mike Chapman is at the scene of a sexual assault and murder. It's a perfect case for Alex and her special skills. And it's certain to be a high-profile case because the victim was a neurosurgeon at Mid-Manhattan Medical Center, the oldest and largest hospital in New York City. Dr. Gemma Dogen was found barely breathing, on the floor of her blood-soaked office. It was too late to save her. In cop parlance, she was a "likely to die." The problems Alex's team faces are immense, starting with too many possible suspects. Not only have Alex's colleagues prosecuted some of the hospital's employees and patients in the past - any one of them could be the killer - but the more than fifteen-hundred-bed complex and its medical college are connected to the Stuyvesant Psychiatric Center, and all three buildings sit on top of a maze of underground tunnels. Scores of transients now populate the tunnels, putting on white coats or scrubs to enter and roam the hospital's corridors as if they were licensed professionals. Anybody could have been near Gemma Dogen's office the night of the murder. While Alex and Mike and police colleague Mercer Wallace step up their search for the killer, Alex must also supervise other cases: the taxi driver who stalks an emergency room physician; a rapist who attacks a comatose young woman; a rabbi who demands a peculiar kind of service from his housekeepers. But it is the Dogen case that disturbs Alex's dreams. The daughter of a cardiologist, Alex had always revered the medical profession. Now she begins to question her own biases. And what about the new man in her life? She met him at anelegant dinner party that is typical of her affluent Upper East Side lifestyle, but is he, too, somehow involved in this case? Policewoman Maureen Forester may discover some of the shocking answers when she volunteers to check into the hospital as a decoy with a supposed neurological

• ISBN10: 0671014935
• ISBN13: 9780671014933
• Publish Date: 1 September 1998 (first published 1 June 1997)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Pocket Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 448
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

Maybe it was because it’s been almost 5 years since I read a book in this series, but I was not impressed. If this book had been edited to eliminate everything that had nothing to do with the plot, it could have been half its size. Fairstein gets way too long-winded about the intricacies of sexual crimes and the prosecuting of them, including a section about how grand juries work, and at some point you have to trust your audience to either be familiar with the elements of crime fiction or to look up what they don’t understand. There are OODLES of crime books that don’t go into this level of detail.

Beyond that, there just wasn’t anything particularly interesting about the mystery, except maybe the sorry state of New York hospitals. We’re never given a chance to connect and sympathize with the victim, because she was basically portrayed as a bitch at every turn. All in all, it was rather boring. I do enjoy the character of Mike Chapman, and sometimes I’d rather the novel followed him around than Alex. That’s a big fail.

I’m sure I’ll read more in this series because I’ve already read some of the later books and enjoyed them more. Fairstein worked out some of her kinks. But I’m sure glad I’m done with the early books.

This is the 2nd book in the series and I enjoyed it. It's a good mystery book and the main character Alex is very likeable.