Synopses & Reviews
New York Times bestselling author Linda Fairstein takes readers behind the scenes of New York City's theater world -- from Lincoln Center to the lights of Broadway -- in a riveting new novel, rich with her trademark blend of cutting-edge legal issues, skillful detective work, and heart-stopping suspense.
Teaming up with longtime friends -- NYPD's Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace -- Assistant DA Alex Cooper investigates the disappearance of world-famous dancer Natalya Galinova, who has suddenly vanished backstage at Lincoln Center's Metropolitan Opera House -- during a performance.
The three colleagues are soon drawn into the machinations of New York City's secretive theatrical community, where ambition takes many forms, including those most deadly. Among Galinova's lovers is Joe Berk, the colorful, strong-willed boss of the Berk Organization, one of four family companies that own all the legitimate theaters on Broadway. The aging ballerina was using Berk to help revive her career at the time of her disappearance.
Cooper, Chapman, and Wallace go underground and backstage at the Met, explore Berk's unusual apartment on top of the Belasco Theatre with its rumored ghostly resident, and then discover bizarre circumstances at City Center, which has a peculiar history not one of them knew about until now.
Within the glamorous but sordid inner sanctums of the Broadway elite, the team confronts the ruthless power brokers who control both the stars and the stages where they appear. They meet Joe's niece Mona Berk, who is mounting a vicious campaign to extract her share of the family fortune, and stunning starlet Lucy DeVore, whose beauty may be her fatal undoing. Chet Dobbis is the artistic director of the Metropolitan Opera, and therefore privy to the most scandalous exploits among its famous inhabitants. He also knows every inch of the labyrinthine building into which the ballerina disappeared...
Meanwhile, Alex is working on a very different case, using a creative technique to nab a physician who has been drugging women in order to assault them. As Dr. Selim Sengor eludes capture, Alex must navigate the new investigative world of DFSA -- drug-facilitated sexual assault -- intent on proving him guilty.
Complicating her quest is the explosive legal and ethical dilemma of using the existing DNA databank to solve new cases. Can Alex convince a judge to let her prosecute a man for a violent crime using DNA that was collected for a prior case in which he was never charged? Or do the suspect's civil rights prevent law enforcement from keeping his DNA on file to be used against him at any future time?
Death Dance is a spellbinding thriller combining a former prosecutor's fresh insight into hot-button legal issues with the unique history and spectacle of New York theater, and its shocking twists make this novel Linda Fairstein's most chilling adventure yet.
Review
"Her most powerful and affecting novel....Fairstein really knows what she's writing about."
-- James Patterson
Review
"Linda Fairstein is carving out a prime spot among writers of suspense fiction."
-- The Washington Post
Review
"A champion teller of detective tales."
-- USA Today
Review
"Fairstein tells it like it is."
-- Michael Connelly
Synopsis
Investigating the disappearance of a world-famous dancer who went missing during a Lincoln Center performance, investigator Alex Cooper and her colleagues find themselves drawn into the underworld of Manhattan's theatrical community and simultaneously pursuing a doctor who has been drugging and assaulting women. By the author of Entombed. Reprint.
Synopsis
Murder at the Metropolitan Opera House pulls Alexandra Cooper behind the scenes at Lincoln Center -- and into the cutthroat conglomerate that controls the city's theaters. Joe Berk, the powerful head of The Berk Organization, was the lover of world-class ballerina Natalya Galinova; was he tied to her disappearance and untimely death after a performance at the Met? Shooting in the dark along with her colleagues Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, Alex juggles a case on the cutting edge of forensic technology: she's about to nab a physician accused of drug-facilitated sexual assaults. But legal entanglements over DNA databanking may prevent Alex from stopping the predator. Cracking open a hidden history of the New York few others see, Alex must deliver a bravura performance -- or prepare to sing her swan song.
About the Author
LINDA FAIRSTEIN, America's foremost legal expert on crimes of sexual assault and domestic violence, led the Sex Crimes Unit of the District Attorney's Office in Manhattan for twenty-five years. A Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, she is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her first novel, Final Jeopardy, introduced the critically acclaimed character of Alexandra Cooper and was made into an ABC Movie of the Week starring Dana Delaney. The celebrated series has gone on to include the New York Times bestsellers Likely to Die, Cold Hit, The Deadhouse (winner of the Nero Wolfe Award for Best Crime Novel of 2001, and chosen as a "Best Book of 2001" by both The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times), The Bone Vault, The Kills, Entombed, Death Dance, and Bad Blood. Her novels have been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her nonfiction book, Sexual Violence, was