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It's going to be a tough trial. Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor Alexandra Cooper's case, involving an attack on investment banker Paige Vallis, would be difficult to prove even without the latest development—it seems that Paige has something to hide.
Most of her story is clear. She'd had dinner with New York consultant Andrew Tripping three times before the March evening when she accepted his invitation to accompany him to his apartment. But what occurred that night? Why didn't she leave the apartment when he started to act strangely? What about Tripping's little boy, Dulles? What happened to the child that fateful evening? And who is the strange man whose appearance in the courtroom seems to terrify Paige?
While Alex's police detective friend Mercer Wallace helps her learn more of the sad details behind the increasingly puzzling rape case, colleague Mike Chapman is uptown in a decaying Harlem brownstone where eighty-two-year-old McQueen Ransome has been murdered, her apartment ransacked.
What could this impoverished, elderly woman have possessed that could have inspired such violence? Photographs on the wall suggest that "Queenie" was once a beautiful and voluptuous young woman who traveled to faraway places. Could there be a clue to her murder in her exotic background?
Her murder will be only the first. Others follow, as the tragic strands of the Paige Vallis and McQueen Ransome cases begin to converge in a poignant alliance of two women from very different worlds.
Faced with formidable personal and professional choices, Alex must learn the old lesson that appearances can deceive, even as she heads for a showdown in which her wits and her courage will be tested as never before.
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Creators
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Awards
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Release date
January 13, 2004 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780743539234
- File size: 152006 KB
- Duration: 05:16:40
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Two seemingly unrelated cases merge, thanks to the persistence of Alex Cooper, feisty New York City Assistant DA. The ever-thickening plot involves a rape trial, the murder of an octogenarian dancer in Harlem, espionage, coin collecting, a hurricane, long-dead King Farouk, and a host of characters. It is to Blair Brown's and the abridger's credit that it all makes sense. This isn't Brown's first outing as Cooper, and she's obviously comfortable in the first-person role of Alex, as well as adept at others. When she says she can't stand an opposing lawyer's voice, you hear why. Every word is clear, and the production flows like the channels for which the book is partially named. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine -
This is an audiobook lover's delight! Linda Fairstein's 25 years as assistant prosecutor for the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit give her intimate knowledge of police procedure, courtroom drama, and the unsavory characters who populate Manhattan's streets. Barbara Rosenblat's ability to create unique voices for each character is never compromised, even during times of razor-sharp, spitfire dialogue. Add a 1933 coin worth $7.6 million and the deaths of an elderly Harlem Renaissance dancer and an investment banker, and you'll find Fairstein's latest difficult to turn off. Barbara Rosenblat's performance is like having an entire repertory cast. Under her tutelage, the words on the page stand up and become living, breathing people. K.A.T. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine
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