Review of Hell Gate by Linda Fairstein

From South Florida Sun-Sentinel --

Mystery review: 'Hell Gate' by Linda Fairstein --

By Oline H. Cogdill --
March 21, 2010 --

Hell Gate. Linda Fairstein. Dutton. $26.95. 416 pp.

In each of Linda Fairstein's legal thrillers, the author gracefully melds New York City's hidden spots and history into a contemporary novel, showing how little has changed in crime and the ways people treat each other.



This theme is well-served in Fairstein's 12th novel featuring New York City Assistant District Attorney Alex Cooper, who specializes in sex crimes. A top-notch plot and realistic situations make "Hell Gate" a first-class tale of New York and the people who built it and now control it.

Politics, sexual trafficking – age-old issues that never go away -- and New York's historical, tax-supported mansions provide a sturdy foundation for "Hell Gate."

Cooper is called to the scene of a rusted freighter that has run aground on a sandbar near Rockaway Beach. The captain has abandoned his vessel, which is loaded with human cargo from Ukraine, including many young women being forced into sexual slavery. The cops also are dealing with Congressman Ethan Leighton whose rising career may be on the skids after he fled the scene of a car accident to cover up an extramarital affair.

Fairstein balances glimpses of New York City history that parallel the contemporary events of "Hell Gate." The horrific importing of young women later forced into prostitution seems ripped from the headlines, but the practice is centuries-old. The 21st century didn't spawn politicians cheating on their wives or denying parenthood, nor are politicial corruption and slush funds modern inventions. All that's changed, Fairstein shows, is the way these events unfurl.

Each outing with Alex brings new insight, and Fairstein is careful not to make her a super sleuth; she is a prosecutor whose job takes her behind the scenes of crimes but, as in real life, the detectives do the investigating.

Interview with Linda Fairstein

From Entertainment Weekly --

Questions for Linda Fairstein --

By: Catherine Garcia --
Mar 19 2010 --

If it seems like crime novelist Linda Fairstein has intimate knowledge of the world she writes about, it’s because she lived it. For 30 years, Fairstein worked at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, serving as head of the sex crimes unit. Her Alex Cooper series is based on the time she spent there; its 12th volume, Hell Gate, out now and on the New York Times Bestseller List. She spoke with EW.com about the writing process, using New York City as a character and what it ’s like being a Law & Order: SVU inspiration.



ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tell us a little bit about Hell Gate.
LINDA FAIRSTEIN: Alex Cooper is a young prosecutor, and has the job that I had for 30 years. I always try to take my reader into a world that explores some aspect of New York City’s history or current events. Two years ago, the idea for this was political scandals, [sparked by] two events. One was [former New York governor] Eliot Spitzer’s fall from grace. He had been a colleague of mine in the Manhattan D.A.’s office. I was just shocked because I knew him to be a brilliant lawyer and have a lovely family. Shortly after that happened, there was a New York City congressman from Staten Island named Vito Fossella. He had a wife and kids on Staten Island…and it turned out he had a child by his mistress in D.C. Before John Edwards, before Gov. Sanford, I thought about exploring political scandals and the duplicity of people we think have integrity and we’ve elected to public office and how it impacts things.

Your books are very New York centric — the city is like a character. How do you decide what parts of New York make it into the story?
Usually there’s a theme in the book. [Take] Lethal Legacy. I’ve always been fascinated by rare book collectors and rare maps, so I used the New York Public Library as the backdrop for it. It’s such a magnificent building rich with history and treasures.

What’s your favorite part of the writing process? Coming up with ideas, research, the actual writing?
For me, it’s the writing. It’s why I chose to leave the courtroom and tell stories. Secondly, the research is great fun. I can’t imagine being one of the authors who hires researchers; I just love getting into places and smelling them and feeling the texture and trying to recreate it. Third, the plotting. That’s the toughest. That’s really the hardest part, I think especially writing crime novels, because the readers are very smart and like to puzzle out the clues. You try to be one or two steps ahead of them but it’s not always successful.

When did you decide you wanted to be a writer?
I had always, from a teenager on, wanted to be a writer. My father, with whom I was very close, so I say this with a big smile on my face, he was very supportive and he used to roll his eyes and say, ‘Oh, you have nothing to write about, you need a career.’ So my other choice was public service. I went to law school knowing that I really could not sit in a garret and write poetry or the great American novel. But I never gave up the dream that I would one day write. I never guessed how much material I’d get in the D.A.’s office. What actually happened was in the late 1980s, a publisher came to me to ask me about writing a nonfiction book about our groundbreaking work in the D.A.’s office. I got permission from my boss and the city to write that first. It was very well respected and reviewed, so I went back to my boss and said, ‘I’ve always wanted to write novels.’ We just had the same rule we had with the nonfiction rule — obviously you can’t do it on city time. So I did write the first four novels in the series while doing both jobs.

How did you find the time?
Weekends, early mornings, vacations.

What made you decide to pursue writing full-time?
It was 30 years and I loved every minute of it. I left six months after 9/11 happened. I was in my office, I saw the second plane hit the towers ten blocks away, and it was truly a time for me to reassess what mattered to me. My husband had just retired and it just seemed like a perfect time to segue into spending more time with him. There were plenty of great people in the D.A.’s office to carry on my work. I still am a lawyer, I still keep my credits current, and I do a lot of non-profit work for victims of violence so that keeps my hand in the old job. I get to do both.

How much of you is in Alex?
Her professional work is very much my passion — my interest in the work, my temperament and what I loved, how I thrived on trying to get justice for victims of violence. I get to take real poetic license. She’s younger, thinner and blonder. She has a trust fund, which I don’t have. Because she’s younger, she didn’t have a lot of the struggles that women had in the ’70s and ’80s breaking into law. Many of the people in the book are composites — nobody is an exact person, but a lot of my friends are represented warmly by characters like them. People who cross me, watch out! You’ll be in a book! (laughs)

The character of ADA Alex Cabot on Law & Order: SVU was based on you. How does that make you feel?
That got started in the brilliant mind of Dick Wolf, who created the show. He knew our unit and has said publically many times that he based the show on our unit and the P.D.’s unit and Alex Cabot’s character on me, although I get no royalties! (laughs) It was entirely his idea to take the public persona of what I do and what I did and make a character out of it. I’m fine with it. It would be fun if I got royalities or a cameo but I just enjoy it. Both Stephanie March [who played Cabot] and Mariska Hargitay [who plays Det. Olivia Benson] have been wonderful allies in the victim advocacy movement. I adore them. They’ve done a really dignified job of bringing those issues to primetime television, which quite frankly I never dreamed would happen 10 years ago.

Interview with Linda Fairstein

From NY DAILY NEWS --

'Hell Gate' author Linda Fairstein finds mystery in Gracie Mansion, home of New York's mayor --

By: Gina Salamone --
March 7th 2010 --

From skulls surfacing in City Hall Park to a body turning up behind Gracie Mansion, some scandalous scenes take place at local landmarks in "Hell Gate."



Author Linda Fairstein didn't have to delve too deep for inspiration for the legal thriller, which hits shelves Tuesday. Many sites and characters were plucked from New York City's news and her own experiences.

Fairstein, 62, headed the sex- crimes unit of the Manhattan DA's office from 1976 to 2002. "Hell Gate" marks the 12th book in her successful crime series about fictional prosecutor Alexandra Cooper.

In the latest novel, Gracie Mansion serves as the center of a murder investigation when a body is found in a well there.
While there's no real well on the upper East Side home's grounds, the body of a man with a knife wound was found in Carl Schurz Park outside Gracie Mansion in 2004, and other crimes occur in the park from time to time.

Fairstein herself has attended many functions at the mansion, the mayor's official residence (though Mayor Bloomberg chooses not to live there).

"It had a history and physical beauty that fascinated me, when you consider that it was built 200 years ago as a summer home when this part of the island was not populated," she says. "People took a boat ride 5 miles away to get away from the congestion and the disease in lower Manhattan. So it was one spot on my list of places to get to" in the books.

The house overlooks Hell Gate, the narrow East River strait that separates Astoria from Randalls Island. Its rough waters are difficult to navigate because of strong tidal flows.

As cops and Cooper canvass the house for clues in the book's murder case, they marvel at the mansion's history. It was built in 1799. Mayor Robert Wagner's wife, Susan, added a new west wing that was completed in 1966.

Inside, stairs lead up to the Blue Ballroom. "This is the huge entertaining space that is the new wing," Fairstein says. "It's just an incredibly gracious and beautiful, entertaining space. That's the way most New Yorkers would come into the house."

In the book, police search the state bedroom upstairs. "Nelson Mandela has stayed in there," Fairstein says. "If you look out over the river, I think you see every borough, except Staten Island, from the second floor of the house."

The home's library is where Cooper and the detectives have their first discussion about the murder.

In the book, a detective mentions all the financial help Bloomberg has anonymously donated to restore the home and track down some of its original furniture. In reality, the mayor has been just as generous.

"The dining room has furniture that has been found and restored," Fairstein says. "The mirror in there has an eagle with a ball and chain in its claws. It's the symbol of the revolution, as the eagle is lifting the ball and chain of oppression from British rule."

The cannonball on display in the mansion's parlor is more than ornamental. "The house was destroyed during the Revolutionary War by cannon fire from Willets Point in Queens and one of the cannonballs was found. So that literally sits in the yellow room, which is a big entertaining parlor," says the author.

Gracie isn't the only mansion that plays a part in "Hell Gate." Hamilton Grange in Harlem and the Morris-Jumel Mansion, which has had reports of being haunted, also appear.

"While I was doing my research, the head of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy told me that there were three, and only three, Federal Period wooden mansions that still exist in Manhattan," Fairstein explains. "So that led me to the other two. Then my research led me to this link among the three of them that involved a murder case from 1800. And that was almost uncanny - that there really was a crime that connected the owners of the three homes."

If that's not shocking enough, few New Yorkers know of the bodies that were buried in City Hall Park and just north of it.

In "Hell Gate," Cooper trips while leaving the building and finds herself face to face with a jawbone in the ditch by a path.

It's not too far-fetched. In 1991, a building project revealed remains of 427 bodies beneath a parking lot about two blocks north of City Hall. They are believed to be part of a long-lost African burial ground. And in 1999, a renovation of City Hall Park turned up Colonial burials — though their history is unclear.

"I don't think, at this moment, you'll see skulls and femurs there," Fairstein admits. "But they're around."

It's not only well-known buildings that show up in "Hell Gate," but the city's far-reaching neighborhoods like Douglaston, Queens. Cooper's favorite restaurants — like Primola on the upper East Side — are Fairstein's, too.

"A lot of out-of-towners will walk in and say, 'Does Linda Fairstein really eat here?' " the author says. "What's her favorite drink? So it's fun for the restaurant owners. And it's fun for me. The mix of real with fictional has always been one of the things that makes me smile when I write."

Fiction Book Reviews: 1/4/2010 (Linda Fairstein)

From Publishers Weekly --

Fiction Book Reviews: 1/4/2010 --

1/4/2010 --

Hell Gate Linda Fairstein. Dutton, $26.95 (416p) ISBN 978-0-525-95161-2

At the outset of bestseller Fairstein’s winning 12th legal thriller featuring New York County ADA Alex Cooper (after Lethal Legacy), the bodies of human trafficking victims wash up on Rockaway Beach. At least one young woman appears to have been dead before she hit the frigid waters. Meanwhile, Ethan Leighton, a rising Manhattan congressman, has fled the scene of a car accident, possibly to avoid exposure of an extramarital affair and a love child. Leighton’s paramour, who calls 911 to report that Leighton has threatened her, later disappears amid signs of violence. Both cases attract the keen attention of Vin Statler, New York’s ambitious post-Bloomberg mayor, who adds political pressure to the crime solving. Fairstein throws a City Council slush fund into the mix, but manages to resolve the various plot threads nicely. While the main criminal’s identity will surprise few, readers seeking a realistic depiction of law-enforcement work will be more than satisfied. 8-city author tour. (Mar.)

In Print : First look at new Fairstein mystery

From The Martha's Vineyard Times --

In Print : First look at new Fairstein mystery --

By Jack Shea --
Published: November 25, 2009 --

"Hell Gate" by Linda Fairstein, Dutton Adult, March, 2010, 416 pages, $26.95.

Visitors to New York City occasionally glimpse one of the handful of restored 18th and 19th century manses, most on the edges of Manhattan. Chilmark summer resident Linda Fairstein uses several of them, including the mayor's official residence, Gracie Mansion, as key elements in her latest crime thriller, "Hell Gate."

The hefty book is scheduled for release in March 2010, published by the Dutton imprint of Penguin Books. It is the 12th in Ms. Fairstein's series of crime mysteries that feature protagonist Alexandra Cooper, head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the district attorney's office.

The book takes its name from a turbulent strait in the East River between Astoria, Queens, and Manhattan's Randall's Island that claimed hundreds of ships and their crews during New York's early maritime days. In the novel, a freighter with human cargo has run aground off a beach in Queens, dumping bodies into the cold January water.

Ms. Cooper gets the call because it's become clear that the rusty Golden Odyssey has human cargo that includes women passengers bound for the sex trade. Earlier the same morning, an up-and-coming New York City family man congressman lands in legal hot water over his girlfriend, a development that may be related to the white slavery beaching. Ms. Cooper catches the congressman's case as well.

Her job is to protect women such as the washing ashore eastern European waifs who've been branded with iconic tattoos identifying them as the property of a specific white slaver, or "snakehead" in police jargon.

Ms. Fairstein had that job, protecting women, for 30 years. She spent the last 25 years of her career leading sex crime investigations and trials involving sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse, and homicide for the Manhattan District Attorney's office. The Vassar and University of Virginia Law school graduate left her legal career in 2002 after writing her first book, "Final Jeopardy," in 1996. Like her protagonist, Ms. Fairstein divides her time between the canyons of Manhattan and the beaches of Chilmark where she and husband Justin Feldman have a home.

Her approach to a female crime-fighting character is different from the norm. Most other popular female crime heroines, like Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum and Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone, are tough, wrong-side-of-the-tracks characters, talking the spare, staccato street talk of the crime novel genre. They are bounty hunters and private investigators - sleuths without portfolio, so to speak.

Not so Ms. Cooper. She is well-bred, well-educated and well-heeled. Car doors are opened for her. Her speaking style is long and lyrical. Make no mistake, though. Ms. Fairstein talked her fictional talk in her real life. The infamous "Preppy" murders (the prosecution of Robert Chambers in 1988), and a seemingly endless string of "wilding" crimes in that era occurred on her watch.

This reviewer is used to reading crime novels that race to their conclusion, but the uninitiated Fairstein reader must often slow down. This book is a page-turner - but not at top speed. For one thing, there is civility to the dialogue, despite the wisecracking of sidekick cop Mike Chapman. For another, Ms. Fairstein includes a lot of real-life behind the scenes procedural detail that some readers might prefer to skip. But there are benefits to slowing down the read and paying attention to the real life aspects.

For one thing, the author is an experienced New York courtroom lawyer, arguably the world's largest legal circus. She plans carefully and connects the dots. Go too fast and you'll miss something - like the fact that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were co-counsels in one New York trial case.

For another, New York City is a central character in her novels. Manhattan's massive and endlessly fascinating sprawl has been creating history for nearly 400 years, and each of Ms. Fairstein's books plumbs an aspect of city history, twinning her plot line with often seemingly mundane historical antecedents that tie to the plot in innovative ways.

Other novelists as disparate as E.L. Doctorow and Jimmy Breslin have found themselves fascinated with the various workings of the city, like New York's system of water pipes and aqueducts, but Ms. Fairstein provides a decidedly different take on the subject, as demonstrated in her 2007 novel, "Bad Blood." Other Alexandra Cooper plots involve city museums, the public library and Lincoln Center.

Would I like the action to go faster? Yes. Would I like Alex Cooper to be harder, crisper and tougher? Yes. But do I believe that I've read a real account of thinly-disguised crimes and the workings of a politically-tainted big city criminal justice system, written by someone to whom justice is extremely important? Yes.