FINAL JEOPARDY

Like her creator, Alexandra Cooper is the New York Assistant District Attorney in charge of prosecuting sex crimes. Day in, day out, she toils in the sewers of the Criminal Courts Building, bent on nailing the nastiest perps in the system. In spite of her glamorpuss investment-banker boyfriend, Jed Segal, it seems her life couldn't get any grimmer—until the day she reads her own obituary in the papers and realizes that Isabella Lascar, the actress friend who's borrowed her place on Martha's Vineyard, has been killed—maybe in mistake for Alex herself. Worse still, a good close look at the evidence tells Alex that despite his fervent denials, Jed was with Iz on the Vineyard. Did he end their fling by shooting her—or was the killer the stalker who'd dogged Iz in Hollywood, or her ex, small-time producer (and big- time cokehead) Richard Burrell, or her latest pre-Jed lover, brain-dead stuntman Johnny Garelli, or Cordelia Jeffers, the mysterious Royal Academy Fellow who wrote Iz a bizarre letter, part advice, part warning—and who now seems to be turning her attention to Alex? First-novelist Fairstein (Sexual Violence: Our War Against Rape, 1993) isn't much of a stylist, but when the story flags, she's got a million anecdotes about the Con Ed rapist and the fondling mail carrier. Patricia Cornwell in the Big Apple. Alex insists she doesn't see every man as a potential rapist, but after reading this, you wonder why not. (Literary Guild main selection; Mystery Guild main selection; author tour)