Devil's Bridge
Review
Devil's Bridge
District Attorney Alexandra Cooper is in the midst of a trial of a sex offender when she learns of a breach in her private computer files by a mole in her department with ties to her current case. Names, dates and witness records could be exposed, endangering the lives of others and the trial’s fair outcome. The trial is subjected to a delay just as she is called out of the courtroom by Detective Mike Chapman, her close associate in the NYPD. He informs her that her longtime stalker, Raymond Tanner, has been apprehended.
After court is adjourned, she gathers with friends and colleagues to celebrate the capture. Mike, whose professional partnership with Alex is mellowing into the romance stage, has drawn a late night shift and cannot join them. Rather than walk the few blocks home alone, she calls an Uber cab for a lift, walks out of the restaurant, steps into the waiting vehicle and vanishes.
"DEVIL’S BRIDGE may be Fairstein’s most nail-biting thriller yet in a long list of award-winning detective novels. She just gets better and better, if that’s even possible."
For the first time in the hugely successful, long-running series narrated by Alex, Linda Fairstein writes from Mike’s point of view as he frantically searches for the woman with whom he only recently realized he is falling in love. Coop, as he calls her, has a long list of potential enemies she has convicted and sent to prison for crimes against women. Is one of them among the witness files hacked from her computer associated with the current case involving a ruthless killer? Or is it someone who has either been released from prison or remains within prison walls who wants to do her harm? Until Mike can focus on who might want to take her hostage and gauge the threat to her life, he must first establish a motive for her disappearance.
Their growing relationship is no mystery to their friends in the department, giving rise to concern by the police commissioner just how far Mike will go to find her. His legendary knowledge of military history helps him piece together a potential holding place for Coop and a possible motive for her abduction. But as time goes on, with no sign of a ransom note or contact with the abductors, can he get to her before it’s too late?
The search for Alexandra Cooper takes readers on a thrilling roller coaster ride from the Statue of Liberty at the tip of Manhattan Island to the George Washington Bridge. Readers look forward to these adventurous grand tours of the Big Apple, which always serve as major characters in and of themselves in each of Fairstein’s books.
DEVIL’S BRIDGE may be Fairstein’s most nail-biting thriller yet in a long list of award-winning detective novels. She just gets better and better, if that’s even possible.
Reviewed by Roz Shea on August 14, 2015