Bad Blood - Linda Fairstein

Bad Blood is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s a decent murder-mystery in there somewhere - not a great one, just a decent one – but the need to develop running characters in the series and with a tendency to give the reader a history lesson on New York at every opportunity, the focus and suspense element is all too often lost.

The latest Alexandra Cooper novel starts off with a fairly conventional court trial, where Brendan Quillian is being tried for the murder of his wife. As he was out of the city at the time of her killing – a strangulation chillingly recorded on a phone message - Chief Prosecutor Alex Cooper has her work cut out for her. However, when Quillian’s estranged brother Duke is killed in a tunnel digging accident, it opens up a whole other line of enquiry for ‘Coop’, involving an ages-old feud between two New York families.

Although it certainly delivers the constants twists and turns you would expect this kind of suspense novel to have, Bad Blood (the title is at least well-chosen with several variations on the theme) does feel largely perfunctory, with even the court trial looking like Fairstein demonstrating her knowledge of court protocol and procedure. That would be fine if the novel was able to stick to the important issues surrounding the case, but it constantly lurches off into other areas, few of which seem directly relevant.

Before we get to the real fireworks of the court trial, we have to endure a long account of the history of how water is delivered to Manhattan, some gratuitous Saudi suspects thrown in to capitalise on post-9/11 fears of New Yorkers’ vulnerability from terrorist attack, a random stalker case Coop is involved with, her preparations for a friend’s wedding, the promise of a romance for the leading lady, and a lot of tedious discussions with friends and colleagues who constantly show off their encyclopaedic knowledge of history of New York and their ability to answer questions on a TV game show.

Much of this could be put down to character development and background, for the series cast of continuing characters, but how relevant, interesting or convincing all this information is to the reader is somewhat negligible. Worse, weak characterisation – the Alex and Mike situation seems rather ham-fisted - and the tendency to info-dump huge amounts of historical research ends up detracting from the focus and pace of the crime investigation, which is something a suspense novel should never do.