The Kills (Alexandra Cooper # 6)

From New York Times bestselling author and former top prosecutor Linda Fairstein comes an electrifying new thriller rich with the riveting behind-the-scenes authenticity that only she can offer ... 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. With its winning combination of courtroom drama, historical detail, and the intriguing lore of a rare object whose fabled provenance provides a glistening thread through the story, The Kills is powerful, stylish writing from a hugely appealing crime-writing star Paige Vallis claimed that she gave in to Tripping's sexual demands because he had threatened to harm his son if she didn't. Alexandra Cooper, prosecuting the ex-CIA man, knew she had her work cut out to convince the jury, but before Paige could complete her testimony on the stand she is found dead - strangled in her own apartment building, just hours after she'd confessed to Alex that she had had a relationship with another ex-CIA operative. While the accusation of rape against Tripping is dropped, he has other charges to face, not least abusing his own child. As Tripping's defence team go into overdrive to keep their client out of jail, Alex, Chapman and Mercer set out to discover who so conveniently killed the woman who could have put him behind bars. As they peel back the layers of Paige's life, they discover a decades-old viper's nest of robbery and double-dealing and discover that truth of the adage of money being at the root of all evil - however old and 'respectable' it might be Manhattan Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper is working feverishly on a tough trial, seeking justice for investment banker Paige Vallis. But in a heated "he said, she said" case, Alex learns that Paige herself has something to hide. Uptown, the murder of an elderly woman with an intriguing past has NYPD officer Mercer Wallace and detective Mike Chapman hunting for an item of stunning value that may have cost McQueen Ransome her life: a legendary Double Eagle gold coin. The twisting threads of the seemingly unrelated tragedies soon entangle Alex in a life-and-death struggle in the watery inlets of New Jersey known as the Kills...where a violent predator is determined to silence her forever. Manhattan Sex Crimes Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper discovers that her current date rape case has become complicated by her client's secrets, as well as by a colleague's investigation into the murder of an elderly Harlem woman