Death Dance by Linda Fairstein

We are back visiting our favorite trio of investigators. Linda Fairstein has created a group of characters that make you feel as if you are coming home every time you visit them in her stories.
For those of you that are not familiar with Alex Cooper and her sidekicks here is the run down:
Alex Cooper is from the DAs office. In her past you can find tragedy when only hours before getting married her fiancee was killed in a car accident. She has stayed emotionally unavailable for a long time.
Mercer Wallace is a detective and is married to Vicki they have a baby boy that is a year old.
And then we have Mike Chapman who suffered a loss of his own in the last book. His girlfriend, who had won a battle with cancer died in a freak skiing accident. It had taken him awhile to finally accept his feeling for Val when he lost her. Mike grew up the son a cop and 48 hours after his father retired he did of a heart attack. This took Mike from academia to the police academy. Now he is back on duty trying to recuperate from his loss.

The main case our trio is working on is the murder of a dancer at the Metropolitan Opera. She is found dead on a roof ledge and the list of suspects just gets longer by the hour. Seems production is not running smoothly at the Met and everyone wants a piece of the pie. When we finally discover who dun it, it doesn't come as a complete surprise but the explanation is well setup to have us saying "Innnteresting"

There are two other cases that add a little humph to the story. A serial rapist that kills his victims at the park and leaves no DNA evidence finally gets nabbed because he chose to attack a jogger running her dog. When the dog bites the assailant, Alex has the pooch's teeth swabbed for DNA.

The other case really doesn't get resolved and I was curious as to how that was going to pan out. So Fairstein leaves a loose end that will keep us on the look out for their next tale. A Turkish medical resident drugs and rapes two Canadian tourist who were staying at his house. Seems he had a thing for rapping unconscious woman and recording them. Alex gets a judge we had met previously in another of her cases, who is a total prick! He lets the perp out with out bail and within 24 hours he had fled the country and gone back to Turkey. This does not stop him from trying to clear his name by threatening Alex and sending her a charming incendiary letter that burns off some of Alex's hair. Yeah, that's going to work!

I discovered Linda Fairstein last year and I have yet to be disappointed in any of her books. The trio works like a well oiled machine but each have their own quirks. The friendships they share make the books warm and charming, regardless of how many dead bodies pop up!

Grade: B+
Format: Audiobook