The Deadhouse Book

Penzler Pick:Much of Linda Fairstein's The Deadhouse is set in a section of New York City that hides in plain sight: Roosevelt Island, floating in the East River between Manhattan and Queens, a place with a lot of curious history and now home to several thousand middle-class residents living in high-rise apartment buildings. The corpse that kicks off the story's action was a Columbia history professor with the outlandish name of Lola Dakota. It turns out that she's not actually dead at all: the videotape of her bloody demise was a set-up, with her abusive husband having made the mistake of hiring undercover cops to kill her. Almost immediately, however, what was faked becomes real. Only this time Lola's body has been crushed in an elevator shaft, making her a victim unlikely to sit up and smile for the cameras as she had earlier in the day.The Roosevelt Island connection comes with the late Dr Dakota's interest in urban archaeology, specifically the site on the island that was once a 19th-century smallpox hospital where quarantined patients were sent. What gives it modern significance--and enough to kill for--is the possibility of locating buried treasure. Much livelier than the title would promise, The Deadhouse is a mystery in the best tradition of a once-esteemed writer who is largely forgotten today--Helen Reilly, whose 1940s crime novels also showed readers quaint and forgotten corners of the city. Linda Fairstein, creator of the Alexandra Cooper series, is also the nationally prominent Manhattan Assistant District Attorney in charge of the Sex Crimes Unit (who first came to prominence prosecuting the so-called "Preppy Murderer"). Wearing her mystery writer's hat, she has watched her work climb the bestseller lists. --Otto PenzlerRead More