COLD HIT

Whoever raped and murdered gallery owner Denise Caxton tied her to a heavy ladder and tossed her into the Hudson to sink into oblivion. But Denise, a fighter all her life, has stubbornly risen to the surface, and now Alexandra Cooper, the ADA who heads Manhattan’s Sex Crimes Unit, is hot on the trail of her killer. The obvious suspects are Lowell Caxton III, the estranged husband and ex-partner who’s still sharing Deni’s apartment, and her current partner, Bryan Daugherty, who’s known throughout the NYPD as a tax cheat who got caught and as a sadistic sex killer who didn’t. But Deni made enemies as easily as she climbed the greasy pole of wealth and social standing, and it’s a bitter blow to Alex when Omar Sheffield, the ex-con in whose abandoned car Deni’s body was transported, turns up as dead as Deni. The killings continue, but Alex, who doesn’t let grass grow under her feet, still has time for anecdotes about the Cruise to Nowhere rapist, the shredded penis, the sex offender whose cell might be decorated with cheesecake photos of Trigger and Mr. Ed, and the serial rapist who continues to elude identification. As usual in Fairstein, the sideshow acts are more interesting than the main event, which Alex links two real-life felonies—the Nazi looting of Russia’s legendary Amber Room, and the fabulously successful heist at Boston’s Isabella Gardner museum—that she has to drop for a dark-horse murderer when she gets too close to the fire. A workmanlike (though oddly seigneurial) job midway between Fairstein’s tour de force debut, Final Jeopardy (1996), and its disappointing follow-up, Likely to Die (1997). (Literary Guild alternate selection; Mystery Guild main; author tour)