Rating: 
Summary: Great story, would have liked more history in it!
Review: Fairstein is a new author for me. I actually spotted the view of the smallpox hospital and that's what made me pick the book up. I have been researching hospitals and institutions, any place where deaf people could have been sent just for being deaf in the U.S. (from about 1850 through the 1940's). So I often come across pictures, photographs, etc. of these haunting places. This was obviously a fiction, but I enjoyed the information concerning these islands and their institutions in New York. Incredibly amazing on several fronts. First off, we sure take our freedoms for granted now...back then, no one had freedoms except the very wealthy and powerful. Even if they committed heinous crimes, they could live in fairly splendiforous means with lower class criminals providing slave labor. Second, it's incredible that so many of these places were architecturally magnificent. Did their architects even consider what these places were going to be used for? What was the purpose of making a place that beautiful, where people were sent to die of infectious diseases? Kind of odd if you ask me!I enjoyed the books protoganist, Alex Cooper, though I get a bit uncomfortable with stories having to do with sexual crimes if it is overdone as a means to sell books. I don't think Fairstein is guilty of this and I will most probably pick up another one of her books, because I liked this one. I enjoyed the sense of friendship between Cooper and the cop...they truly enjoy one another's company purely as friends, and they complement each others strengths and weaknesses. I've had a couple of friends like that, both at work and in my interpreters, so I am pleased to see it written about well in a book. The story concerning a woman who dies, even after gaining protection from her abusive husband, is very complex. It got a little confusing trying to follow the threads of the story in some parts. But on the whole, an enjoyable mystery. Just would have liked a lot more historical information about that island and its hospitals...maybe the author would consider writing a nonfiction about that? Karen L. Sadler,
Science Education
Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting History Lesson
Review: This was my first Linda Fairstein novel. I thoroughly enjoyed the history of Roosevelt Island presented in the novel, but was bored with the story and characters. I will read her earlier novels and hope for better plots, but will settle for more good history lessons. Because of this novel, I look forward to visiting Roosevelt Island.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting plot but not much else
Review: As is standard with Fairstein novels, The Deadhouse has an interesting plot/mystery but Fairstein's poor writing detracts from the novel. Read this for the mystery-but don't expect anything else. The main focus of The Deadhouse revolves around the murder of a professor, Lola Dakota. Setting this in academia could have provided Fairstein with a lot to write about and rich characters to explore. Unfortunately (and I say this as a former academic), Fairstein seems to be completely clueless about how universities really function-and how divided academic disciplines are. Even at an experimental school, very few professors work across disciplines. As a medical historian, I was also insulted by Fairstein's bizarre assumption that an archeological dig would include a political scientist and a biologist. Historians and anthropologists would slit their throats before they allowed people with such different approaches to walk near an archeological site. Academic politics are characterized by a surreal number of turf battles (ironically, these battles-among people who essentially do the same thing-would have provided a much more interesting backdrop for the novel). Along the way, various different sex crimes occur and one gets a glimpse into the problems and issues which confront D.A.s working on sex crimes. This is always the most interesting part of Fairstein's novels and I would have preferred it if she followed several of these stories all the way through. I also have a peeve with Alexandra. She is perfect-perfectly bland-and I find myself annoyed by the fact that Fairstein always likes to keep her at the "perfect" age for a single woman-36. Why can't she age? Why is she always virtuously eating salads? Why does Jake like her? There is nothing real about this woman. She's a piece of cardboard. The other characters are poorly developed as well (including Lola-she's a non-academic's silly idea of what a maverick academic is). Read this for the mystery-which is, as always, interesting but if you are looking for characters to care about, skip this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great concept, but a let down.
Review: This was my first Linda Fairstein book, but I am not compelled to pick up another. It was almost as though she was writing a book to write a book, not because she had something to say.
The concept itself was very interesting and a lot could have happened with it, but in the end I found the book rather boring and uninteresting. I finished it because I wanted to know "who dun it" but I could have left it unfinished and it wouldn't have bothered me a bit.
The plot was kind of flaky, the subplots could have been left out entirely, and there was just far too much politics and backbiting. Perhaps things really are that was for a female in the legal environment, but books are where we go to *escape* reality.
Finally, the ending even seemed rushed, as though there was a page allotment and too much had been used up already.
Bottom line, I would not recommend this particular book.
Rating:
Summary: Would read it again!!
Review: I stumbled upon this book, and the title itself was eye catching. The novel had me reading every time I had a break. It is a great mystery book, full of surprises!!!! I recommend it to anyone who likes mysteries!!!!
Rating:
Summary: A lot to like, but ...
Review: Lola Dakota is one of the most interesting characters I've encountered in a while. Though she doesn't ever appear in the book in real time (it's her demise that is the catalyst for the action), she gave the story real texture. A respected professor with more than a touch of showgirl, a liberated woman with terrible taste in men, a lover of history and a lover of wealth ... Lola was a complex woman, and it's these complexities that seem to keep sending Alex and Chapman in different directions when trying to figure out the how's and why's of her death. The plot was intricate and involving. I also liked the unexpected and moving glimpse into Chapman's personal life. Unfortunately, I could not care less about Alex and her reporter/lover. Their dialog and their big fight seemed contrived. I think the book would have been just as good (if not better) without that subplot.
Rating: 
Summary: Linda's best yet!
Review: I just finished The Deadhouse and thought it was Fairstein's best yet! In The Deadhouse, Linda paints a beautiful picture to go with the historical facts in Alex Cooper's investigation into the death of Lola Dakota. Along with being a battered wife, the ingenious, albeit perfectionist, professor was a genius in her work--but obviously not in choosing a husband. Lola's work took her to a smallpox hospital outside of Manhattan for a dig along with a group of professor's from King's/Columbia Universities. I highly recommend this book if you're a Linda Fairstein fan. This is her best yet. She can't get them written fast enough for me! To read an interesting book related to Linda, please read A Tangled Web by Gregory Lions. This is based on a true story prosecuted by Linda back in the later 1996-97 relating to Madame X. It's a MUST read along and will give you a different look at the Prosecution!
Rating:
Summary: Great addition to a great series
Review: I could not put this book down. Ms. Fairstein gets better with each book. I hope we don't have to wait too long for Alex and Mike's next case.
Rating:
Summary: 4th but not best -- plus I have a Peeve...
Review: So here we have Linda Fairstein's fourth novel about her leading lady Alexandra Cooper. Fairstein in real life (not sure when she does her writing) shares the same job as Cooper in fiction, head of the Sex Crimes Unit of the DA's Office in Manhattan; so the streets of Gotham are once again our setting. And the now familiar supporting cast, especially Alex' foil, detective Mike Chapman and a few others in bit parts, are reprised from the first three stories. A serious boyfriend, NBC news correspondent "Jake", has a fairly large part first coaxing Alex to come "shack up" and later throwing her away over a hot murder lead he won't share with our leading lady. The plot this time is about college professor Lola Dakota who has been stalked by an ex-husband so ruthlessly that the NJ DA's office stages a fake murder to entrap the ex, which ostensibly works, only to have Lola turn up really dead just a few hours later under mysterious circumstances. Thereafter, we get a hundred boring pages about an obscure island near Manhattan which housed prisoners and insane people and smallpox victims, et al, during mostly the 1800's. Various of the college staff are working there as (I guess -- it's not all that clear) historians and archaeologists, and there are rumors of missing diamonds and so on to add to the intrigue. Meanwhile, the repartee between Cooper and Chapman, their relationship often bordering on the amorous in earlier stories, but rather biting in this one, breaks up the history lesson as the murder leads get worked in a chapter here and there. I recommend these stories, but urge the interested to start with any of the first three not this one. To me, this one lacks cohesiveness, lacks charm, and lacks tension: while the suspense does build, the ending to some extent comes too quick and too easy, despite some trumped up personal jeopardy to Cooper. And now to my pet peeve -- I absolutely cannot believe for one second that a top executive in the NYC DA's office runs around on one single case as much or more than the detectives solving crimes. Last I knew, DA's prepare and try cases, grill witnesses including the police, and spend more time with law books and associates in court than roaming the streets hunting for clues. If we weren't told Alex' real job, with brief stops to her office for literally a few minutes here or there on other matters, we would swear she was a police detective working undercover or something. I really have to wonder if Fairstein does this in real life, because if not, why does she insist Cooper run around as though she were a disciple of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warchawski. I have to put this prejudice off to the side every time I read one of these stories. Lastly, it's not obvious that Fairstein is improving with experience. Whereas you can almost see the strength of Lisa Scottoline's skills improving every couple of books (she's up to 8 now), we see here more a very good entry level followed by little additional development of expertise. I think Fairstein could do better, and if it's a lack of time getting in the way, maybe she really should "quit her day job" (as they say) and write full time. Maybe a spinoff series about a lady detective might be a fine idea as well -- she certainly seems to enjoy the action she insists in portraying. We shall see.
Rating:
Summary: Lots to Yawn At
Review: In this slow-moving entry in the Alex Cooper series, Linda Fairstein gets badly bogged down in some fairly esoteric New York history as she tries to tell the tale of a murdered college professor named Lola Dakota. It seems that Lola had an all-consuming interest in Blackwell Island, a corollary to Manhattan Island that once housed a horrific set of prisons and hospitals during the historic plague years. Fairstein gives us an exhaustive and confusing history of the place, including its famed smallpox hospital, long gone to ruins. It's not that the history is not interesting, but it bogs the story down time and again until the plot lines often becomea confusing maze. There are many possible suspects in the murder of Lola, whose life was apparently as flamboyant as her name. Alex and Chapman are on the case, examining everyone from Lola's abusive and shady ex-husband, the prime suspect, to Lola's equally shady professorial colleagues at the university. Since the murder has taken place during the Christmas holidays, the investigation--and the story--frequently gets sytmied by a lack of momentum. Never is the book more frustrating than when we get more-than-we-needed glimpses into Alex's private life, this time with new and serious beau Jake, a high-profile TV journalist. As in the first three books, Fairstein's descriptions of Alex's personal life never quite come to life. The scenes between Jake and Alex, from the bedroom to the elegant restaurants they frequent, are embarrassingly stilted and ring untrue. Contrast that with the high-energy relationship between Alex and her cohorts, Chapman and Mercer, and the lesser characters in Alex's world of cops and prosecutors, and it seems even more out of place. In "The Deadhouse," particularly, much more so than the first three novels, this juxtaposition between Alex's intriguing and gritty work life and her sophisticated, wealthy, and--yes, boring--personal life, gets in the way of the story. The first three novels moved along at such a fast and interesting pace that the reader almost welcomed the breaks. But this novel is so slow-moving in every way, that the breaks simply serve to deaden one's interest. By the end of the book, I didn't much care who killed Lola or why, and I found the revelation of the murderer as big a yawn as the story itself. Fairstein is a fine writer, and usually weaves an interesting tale, which made "The Deadhouse" even more disappointing to read. It is worth reading for those who are Alex Cooper addicts, but I certainly would not recommend this as a first taste of Fairstein. She can do much, much better.
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