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SILENT MERCY
by Linda Fairstein
Dutton, March 2011
400 pages
$26.95
ISBN: 0525952020


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Alexandra Cooper (prosecutor for the Special Victims Unit of the New York DA's office) and her colleagues, Detectives Mike Chapman an Mercer Wallace, are called to the scene of an especially grisly murder -- a young woman decapitated and incinerated and left at Mount Neboh Baptist Church in Harlem. The church was once a synagogue, when Harlem had a wealthy Jewish population. A pendant with a Star of David is the single clue to the corpse's identity.

The head is finally found in a child's backpack at the Church of Saint John the Divine, which is still incomplete after almost a hundred years. From fingerprints, the body is ultimately identified as a young woman, twice arrested for participating in demonstrations designed to express solidarity with Israeli women, protesting against a religious provision that prevented them from praying at the Wailing Wall (also known as the Western Wall) in Jerusalem.

Fairstein makes clear that the detectives and prosecutors don't work on a single case (as shows such as LAW AND ORDER would have you believe). One of the most gripping scenes in the novel is Alex's courtroom confrontation with a bishop who is trying to wriggle out of any responsibility for a defrocked priest accused of molesting young boys; the priest was moved from parish to parish in the western part of the country, where he continued to be given posts where he was in contact with young boys. Alex reminds the bishop that pedophiles do not tend to reform.

A second gruesome murder occurs when another young woman is left at a Catholic church with her tongue cut out. She had been ordained a Catholic priest. Not surprisingly, she was excommunicated as were those who ordained her. As it turns out, she and the first victim were known to one another, something that figures in to the somewhat surprising solution.

As usual, Mike Chapman steals the book. He is handsome, knows a great deal about history, has excellent intuitions -- and, most of all, he loves "Jeopardy!" The only dud is Luc, a French restaurateur who is Alex's love interest. The only reason for him to be in the book is to show that Alex has a life outside the courtroom. He has the charisma of a carrot.

New York is, or course, a central character in the book. Fairstein easily knows as much about the city as Mayor Bloomberg -- but, then, he's really from Massachusetts.

§ Mary Elizabeth Devine taught English Literature for 35 years, is co-author of five books about customs and manners around the world and lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Devine, November 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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