Linda Fairstein

Linda Fairstein draws on her former work as a Manhattan prosecutor in the Alexandra Cooper mystery series. The Deadhouse, first published by Little, Brown in 2001 and later issued by Pocket Books, sends Cooper and detective Mike Chapman to Roosevelt Island after a university professor’s death. An abandoned nineteenth-century smallpox hospital becomes central to the investigation, joining New York history to the series’ courtroom and police detail. Hachette identifies The Deadhouse as the winner of the 2001 Nero Award, while Simon & Schuster places it within the continuing Alexandra Cooper novels. Fairstein’s professional background gives the fictional case its procedural structure and institutional setting.