How would you like to wake up one morning and read your obituary in the daily paper? This is what happens to Assistant D.A. Alexandra Cooper when she surfaces in her New York apartment. It turns out that the body of a woman, with her face blown away, has turned up in a car rented in the D.A.'s name and left in the driveway of her weekend home. Why was her lodger, a famed Hollywood star, killed? Or was it a case of mistaken identity and was Coop the real intended victim? As it is her job to send violent criminals to jail, there is no scarcity of suspects. When a stalker enters the frame, our heroine has to set about defending herself, but comes within an inch of a bloody leave-taking before the baddie is apprehended. Cooper is yet another entry in the growing list of formidable female protagonists in the crime fiction lists, and it will be interesting to see how the series holds up.