Sunday 5 August 2012

The Kills Linda Fairstein

My first outing with Linda Fairstein despite the impressively long list of titles published.
The draw was the fact that she is/was a highly succesful prosecutor in the US specialising in sex crimes.
I'm a fan of a decent court thriller and decided this author may fit the bill. So it was off on a hunt around the local charity shops to find any of her books. In 17, yes 17, such shops in my home town this was the only one I found. Are they being preserved for prosperity somewhere?

We start with an alleged rape case where the attacker is known to the victim. It's not as straight forward as that though as the victim is "persuaded" to participate using emotional rather than physical abuse and the perpertrators 10 year old son is in the room when the abuse takes place.

Then it's over to a murder that may or may not be connected of an old lady who was once a glamour model back in the days when feathers were in the picture strategically placed.

So we now have two cases, two lots of witnesses, several investigators, a journalist, a judge, a few solicitors, more than a couple of locations and a lot of history to catch up on.

All in all this was a hard book to enjoy for me. The very reason I bought it was the court case and this paled into insignificance against the detail history of a coin, or two coins. Aside from the coin story, the noticeable difference between this court appearance and some others was the apparently dispassionate approach to it from the litigators. I appreciate that this must be necessary to do the job for any length of time but it doesn't add to the novel.
The decider- Would I buy another book by this author? No


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