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    Bad Blood
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    Bad Blood
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    Bad Blood
    Audiobook11 hours

    Bad Blood

    Written by Linda Fairstein

    Narrated by Barbara Rosenblat

    4/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    Alexandra Cooper has a tough case to prosecute. Businessman Brendan Quillan has been charged with hiring an assassin to kill his wife, but the evidence is flimsy. Then an explosion kills Quillan's construction worker brother. The blast isn't a terrorist act, nor is it an accident, but it looks as though Duke Quillan was the target. None of the investigating team had any idea that Brendan had a brother, never mind one so far on the other side of the tracks. Alex soon discovers that Quillan's upbringing is very different from what she'd first assumed, and in the cupboard of his estranged family there are many skeletons...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateJan 1, 2008
    ISBN9781407415642
    Unavailable
    Bad Blood
    Author

    Linda Fairstein

    Linda Fairstein was chief of the Sex Crimes Unit of the district attorney's office in Manhattan for more than two decades and is America's foremost legal expert on sexual assault and domestic violence. Her Alexandra Cooper novels are international bestsellers and have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She lives in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard.

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    Reviews for Bad Blood

    4/5

    378 ratings47 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I just wasn't that into this book - it didn't have any really exciting, edgy parts like I expect from this author, there were a few overdone descriptions and unrealistic conversations, and the Jeopardy thing is really starting to feel overdone - c'mon, they're really together near a TV at Jeopardy time THAT often? However, I definitely recommend some of Fairstein's earlier titles in this series - maybe she's just getting tired of doing this same thing and needs to break free and start a fresh series?
    • 4/5
      Excellent suspense and storytelling In my opinion, I thought "Bad Blood" was an excellent read, and it kept my interest as I followed Alex Cooper as she searched for answers to solve a tunnel explosion and a man on trial for the murder of his wife. The story moves along at a quick pace and I felt it was an interesting read. The reviews are numerous on this tale, so there's no need at this point to recap the story further, else I may give away more of the story for those folks that haven't read it. I will add that it was very educational to learn (which I always enjoy) about the water tunnels of New York City. It was very apparent that Ms. Fairstein did a considerable amount research into this subject and I appreciate her effort. Overall, I enjoyed this great mystery and I'd gladly recommend it to anyone.
    • 3/5
      I like Alexandra and her partner the Jeopardy quiz loving cop, Mike, but this book wasn't as good as the others that I've read. While prosecuting a philandering husband for murdering his rich wife, the city of NY suffers an explosion in an underground water supply system. It's all tied up a little too neatly.
    • 3/5
      This is a three-year-old mystery novel in Fairstein's Alexandra Cooper series, but it's a new series to me. I don't know how I missed these novels except that like the old saying, "So many books, so little time." Cooper is a D.A. in New York City and this book involves treachery among the sandhogs who are digging Tunnel #3 to carry water throughout the city. The old tunnels are ancient and in danger of leaking. Think of New York City with no water at all and you can see why this is important.Sandhogs of course are the guys who dig the tunnels all over the world. One reason for the name dates from the building of the Brooklyn Bridge when caissons had to be sunk deep under the river and the major danger was being pulled down into the sand to their death. Not many people are willing to do such work for obvious reasons but intrepid Irish sandhogs are a brotherhood who continue that job through generations.Cooper's case involves a member of one of those families. At one point she descends into the shaft to Tunnel #3 after an explosion, scared to death but persevering even though someone tries to kill her. A cold case turns out to be a part of the story as well. As Cooper was in serious danger through most of the story, I was on tenterhooks reading the book. (What are tenterhooks anyway?)I enjoyed Bad Blood enough that I will look for more of the Cooper series. I like the courtroom drama and the involved plot with characters who are quite believable and fallibly human. I recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      unusual setting to a great thriller
    • 4/5
      A delightful mix of police procedures, forensic detection, budding romance, and some history of the underground tunnels of New York City. Alexandra Cooper, the district attorney handles them all with aplomb.
    • 4/5
      Bad Blood is the 9th book in the Alexandra Cooper, assistant district attorney in New York City, series. Alex Cooper is about as ready as she can be in her recent case. The daughter of a successful businessman, Amanda Quillian, was strangled in her upscale townhouse, and her husband, Brendan, is on trial for her murder. He has hired one of the most prominent defense attorneys in the area, and his attorney is not about to let anything slip by him without a fight.An explosion in a New York water tunnel shakes the city barely a week into the trial, killing three men. Police rush in to determine whether the explosion was an accident or intentional. After the Twin Towers bombing, any explosion or threat to the city is taken even more seriously than ever before. The threat of terrorism is very real. Pulled into the investigation by a strange twist that may or may not be related to the defendant she has on trial, Alex is soon traveling over 600 feet into the earth and into parts of New York she did not know existed. Nothing is quite what it seems and the deeper she digs, the more dangerous things become. Joined by her sidekicks, homicide Detective Mike Chapman and Detective Mercer Wallace, Alex is sure she can uncover the truth.One of my favorite features in Linda Fairstein’s is how the author takes a piece of New York history and weaves it into her modern day murder thriller. In Bad Blood, she takes readers underground, into New York City’s water system and subway tubes sharing their history and also offering a glimpse into the dangerous work of the sandhogs, the people who work in the tunnels. Bad Blood is one of those fast-paced stay up late novels. Linda Fairstein has succeeded in writing another great legal thriller that is pure entertainment and fun.
    • 5/5
      This is the ninth in the Alex Cooper series by Linda Fairstein. Fairstein was the head of the sex crimes unit in the DA's office in New York City for 25 years, leaving to concentrate on her writing and to be a media consultant on sexual violence and domestic abuse for the major networks. Her character, Alex Cooper, is also the chief prosecutor for the sex crimes unit, and many of the minor stories in the books are based on real cases Fairstein has been involved with. This background gives great authenticity to the series. More than that, Fairstein loves and knows the city of New York so well, and each book tends to focus on some fascinating aspect of the city, such as the time Edgar Allen Poe spent there, the art world, the Metropolitan Opera House, etc. In Bad Blood, the story revolves around the New York City subterranean world, the fragile water system. the subways, and all the underground world worked by sandhogs The plot is excellent, the settings incredible, particularly the closed City Hall subway stationI sometimes get tired of the character of Mike Chapman, the policeman Alex works most with, but it wasn't a bother in this book. It was an excellent entry in a good series.
    • 3/5
      I don’t understand why Alex is involved in this case at all. It seems that the author wanted to write a more niche type of book when she created Alex as a sex-crimes prosecutor, but quickly bored of that and wants to turn Alex into a homicide prosecutor instead. The thread linking this murder to a rape case is so slim that it merits only a single mention. After that it’s just headlong action, piecing together of clues, bonding, romance and a bit of girl talk. Not a bad book, but that aspect is irritating. I would like it if Fairstein returned to the sex-crime angle. I know that my emotion ratchets up when she paints those scenes of Alex arguing her case with some backwards, misogynist fool. I feel for her more then than when she is a common-place homicide prosecutor.But homicide is what we have and it’s set in a very interesting locale; New York’s underground. A whole mesmerizing and dangerous city in itself, Fairstein does a very good job portraying the atmosphere; dark, closed-in, damp, running with water and highly dangerous. Not just the physicality of the place, but the people who inhabit that world. A group called the sandhogs built virtually all of the infrastructure below ground. For generations, these dangerous jobs are almost handed down from father to son. Families are proud of this vocation and guard against outsiders who just don’t understand the calling. Women underground are verboten and blood feuds span the generations.Basically, that’s what the title refers to, although there is a side meaning as well. Two families, the Quillians and the Hasetts are bitter enemies over some death that was supposed to be the fault of a rival family member. Who knows if it’s really true, but someone wanted to get to Brendan Quillian to take revenge. Since Brendan eluded the call of the underground, they have to use less direct methods. The other meaning of Bad Blood is that some trace evidence found pointed to one sibling, but it was because of a bone marrow donation from another sibling that threw out the bad blood identification. I still don’t really buy the science that explained that, but as a device it was at least new.The interpersonal relationships and the vignettes showing them are very calming and reassuring to me. Exactly like they were in Nancy Drew novels which I’ve compared to Alex Cooper novels before. They’re not smarmy portrayals and seem very real to me. I can’t have them myself, so it’s nice to read about them.
    • 4/5
      finds Assistant DA Alexandra Cooper deeply involved ina complicated, high-profile homicide case. Defendant Brendan Quilliam, a prominent young businessman, is charged with the brutal strangulation of his beautifful young wife, Amanda. His conviction is not a certainty: Quilliam was conveniently ouut of town on the day of the killing, and he has hired a formidable defense attorney who seems one step ahead of Cooper as the trial opens. But with the help of detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, she is confident she can prove Quillian paid a hit man to commit the crime.
    • 1/5
      Terrible book from an unoriginal author who shouldn't have even bothered writing this
    • 3/5
      some of the plot was a little unbelievable
    • 4/5
      Enjoyable mystery. The information on Sandhogs was new to me.
    • 3/5
      Very well done; but, like the others I've read the court room aspects are more interesting than the "thriller" detective parts. In order to escape the court room so she can get into the detection parts she has the defendant engage in a completely unmotivated act when he essentially has won his case.Generally this bifurcated role that Cooper plays, prosecutor/pursuer, although commercially successful, becomes increasingly difficult to accept.It's formulaic to an extreme. It would be interesting to see if she could resolve the first half of the book simply in the context of the trial, rather than in the depths of the subway under city hall. But, of course, that was not her intent to begin with; the trial was merely a launching pad for the formulaic elements that followed.
    • 1/5
      A readers digest condensed book story from work. Did not like the storyline or characters. Nothing impressive or memorable about this book.
    • 5/5
      A good read I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the ending.
    • 4/5
      Bad Blood is a good Virgil Flowers suspenseful novel. Virgil is called into help a local town with an apparent suicide only to find that it related to three other murders. Whether or not this was based upon a real crime story, it dealt with a horrible child and adult sex cult. The book received four stars in this review.
    • 4/5
      Read like a newspaper article except for the ever present Virgil sex scenes. Also a little too graphic w the pornography, which was the hook I suppose. Well written w a dash of Sandford's quips. Just a little too obvious though I did tear right through it.
    • 3/5
      Sandford has a spinoff from the Lucas Davenport novels about one of Davenport's detectives named Virgil Flowers. Flowers mainly works outside of the Minneapolis metropolitan area. This story as about some bad business involving a religious cult in the farm towns of Minnesota. This is a good story that starts out low key with what looks like an accidental death and gradually builds to a Waco like shoot-out.
    • 1/5
      This is my first John Sandford novel. It will most likely be my last. There is a good book buried in here somewhere, but unfortunately the book is written in an unforgivably bland, facile, phoned-in manner. To me this seems like an obvious case of a successful writer churning out another one as fast as possible to keep the gravy train rolling. The author chooses to reveal the whodunit very early on, and because the character development is so scant that you don't care what happens to them, that means there is literally zero suspense as the book mercifully lurches to a close. I read lots and lots of mysteries and thrillers. This one was one of the weakest I've ever read.
    • 4/5
      Virgil was up to the task in this one. He always brings humor, even in a book dealing with such terrible crimes as the ones posed in the book. Child sexual abuse, on a grand scale, and was 'supported' by a religious cult, a really terrible topic.
    • 4/5
      Synopsis: A young man, who everyone agrees was a 'good kid', bludgeons a farmer to death. He is arrested and subsequently found hanged in his cell. Virgil is called in when the local sheriff believes it's not suicide but murder. They find that this is just a hint of the depravity that's going on in a cult.Review: Parts of this book were hard to read, but there were lighter parts, as well. It reminds me of the Waco cult and the effect that religious group had on their children.
    • 4/5
      Virgil Flowers is brought in to investigate a strange murder at a rural Minnesota grain elevator. A farmer had pulled in with his truck of grain. The young man working at the elevator retrieves his baseball bat and sneaks up behind the farmer. He clobbers the unsuspecting man then tries to make his death look like an accident, but this killing was clearly premeditated. Flowers is called in to this area where murders rarely occur by the new sheriff, an attractive woman named Lee Coakley. There's clearly a spark struck between them from the start. But no time for romance yet. Crimes must be investigated.

      John Sandford performs a bit of literary derring-do here. He has his wise cracking, fun loving Virgil trying to solve a case that might involve a most horrific network of pedophiles. Child abuse is not funny, but Virgil is. The combo actually works. Virgil lightens it up just enough to make all the dark parts not quite as sickening. Sandford does a splendid job on this one.
    • 4/5
      In the latest Virgil Flowers investigation, we follow the detective as he investigates the bludgeoning death of a soybean farmer by a local teen. When the teenager is then found hanging in his cell, a victim himself of a murderous prison guard who in turn is found dead under suspicious circumstances, Flowers has his hands full proving these where all murders not accidents or suicides.
      The ensuing investigation brings to the fore a religious organization, World of Spirit, Teutonic in its nature and calling, that has been ongoing since its conception over a hundred years ago when German immigrants settled in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. At the core of its beliefs are home-schooling, segregation from the outside world and inter-family marriages. In modern times, this has led to incest, wife swapping, and with the introduction of pornography on the Internet, sexual perversion. Flowers is able to tie in the death of a teenage girl, a sect member, who was suspected of being a prostitute, into the other three murders and all hell breaks loose.
      As more and more perversions are discovered as cult members scramble to cover their tracks, Flowers and the local sheriff, Lee Coakley, are carrying on their own tumble-in-the–bed affair behind the scenes, trying to keep that out of the view of the small town gossips.
      A rough and tumble sexy page-turner of a thriller that will keep you involved and engaged with each turn of the page.
    • 5/5
      Sanford turns in a thoroughly enjoyable read—and a decided improvement over the previous offering—in this fourth novel featuring Virgil Flowers. Here Flowers is initially drafted to investigate a case of a supposed suicide by a young athlete charged with the murder of a middle-aged farmer. The case quickly morphs into an investigation of a religious "cult" that is suspected of rampant sexual molestation of children as young as 12 years old. The plotting is suitably complex and the reader is challenged to determine how Flowers will solve the case. Gone is the fascination with obscure band t-shirts but this novel takes place in winter so I imagine the t-shirts will surface again in the next novel set in suitable weather. Virgil's irritability attraction to women is still apparent and a bit tedious. Everything considered, however, this is the best Virgil Flowers novel yet.
    • 4/5
      That F***in Flowers is sent to investigate a murder in very rural SW Minnesota. Very quickly, the crimes mushroom and he is investigating, not three but four deaths in a very small area. An attractive and recently divorced sheriff is locally in charge. It is ideal, well almost, he doesn't bring his boat so no fishing, as Virgil uncovers decades of spousal and child abuse within a local church group. Hooking up, in the current vernacular, with the sheriff; he exposes the the cult's activities. To which, they respond with extreme vigor and violence.
    • 4/5
      An excellent addition to the Virgil Flowers series, a series I prefer to the Lucas Davenport books which often devolve into psychobabble with Weather and Ellen.

      The case begins with the baseball bat head-bashing murder of a local farmer delivering soybeans to the local mill. The killer is a well-liked football star and his actions puzzle the community, but not as much as the string of killings that follow. BCA detective Flowers is asked to help with the investigation by the local newly elected sheriff who fears her election at the expense of one of her deputies might compromise the investigation.

      If you read the reviews on Amazon, the one-star comments seem to fall into a couple of groups: those who object to "bad" words and/or the subject matter (child abuse and its connection to a religious cult or it's just "pornography", a bizarre complaint indeed), and those who complain about the Kindle price (get a life folks, you don't have to buy the book.) In other words the one star reviews have little substance to them and can be safely ignored as trite.

      Some of the dialogue, especially with the children of the cultish group, seemed forced and whether such a group could be as large as it was in a rural community without raising more than a few eyebrows is problematic. It's a good story. My quibbling minor complaint is that perhaps Sandford could have used the story to examine the ramifications of a mindset that teaches a belief system to children they believe to be good that is in direct opposition to normal societal values.

      One line I really liked: "Nothing scares a shit-kicker like somebody shooting up his truck."
    • 4/5
      As usual, I received this book from a GoodReads giveaway. It's also worth noting that this novel belongs to a genre that is normally not among those I pick up for frequent perusal. Because of this I'm reviewing a bit outside my ken.

      In a nutshell, Sandford's novel is about as pulpy as it gets: gritty, action packed and completely unapologetic about it. Despite the fact that this is not a genre I tend to pick up, and I'm not likely even now to start, I did find myself dragged along quite against my will once having started. Sandford's style is marvelous and it's obvious that he's been doing writing in this vein for quite some time. Easily the best I've read in the crime-action genre.

      My only real complaint is that he does tend to go over the top. His dramatic conclusion reads more like a scene from a war movie than a police action. If this sort of thing regularly occurs then I'm rather surprised there are any cops left to keep the peace.

      That aside, Sandford's writing is solid and his topic engaging. For those who enjoy work in the CSI realm this is a grand example of the genre.
    • 3/5
      The further adventures of "that fuckin' Flowers." This one takes awhile to heat up, but once they start going after the bad guys it gets pretty exciting. The big showdown and final outcome is sort of like a combination of the Ruby Ridge fiasco and the raid on the FLDS Yearning for Zion compound. I give Bad Blood 2.5 stars for story, but I rounded up to 3 stars because Sandford writes so well. This one wasn't as much fun as the third installment. The subject matter is very disturbing, all the more because it's so believable. It's disgusting what people justify under the protected status of religious beliefs.
    • 4/5
      Murder, suicide? Or murder, murder... Newly elected sheriff Lee Coakley needs some back-up. Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers (aka, that eff'n Flowers) like the look of her, but the case gets nastier the longer he stays in Warren County. Sanford ups the ick factor in this suspenseful thriller. Who-dun-it's no mystery. Who's going to live through it, is.