Lola Dakota, a university professor in New York, has endured years of torment from her abusive husband.

But when he makes the mistake of hiring undercover cops to kill her, she agrees to fake her own murder.

The sting appears to be successful and her husband is arrested, but a couple of hours later the fake death becomes real when she is found crushed in the bottom of a lift shaft.

Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper is brought in to help NYPD detectives Chapman and Wallace to find the killer.

Looking beyond her husband into her professional life, they discover a university department riddled with jealousies, extra-marital affairs, swindled funds & the unexplained disappearance of a student known to be a drug user.

The one thing which seems to link all the players with the misdemeanours is the university's research site .

On an island off Manhattan they were investigating the remains of the Victorian isolation hospitals, lunatic asylums & the morgue...

The Deadhouse.

But why Lola's murder is connected to the place is not so easy to prove, nor the identity of her killer.

This competent and entertaining crime thriller, like her previous books, is enriched with procedural detail and the authenticity of Fairstein's personal experience.

'If it is authenticity you demand, Linda Fairstein has got it in spades...she delivers the other ingredients, too: engaging characters, an intelligent story full of twists and terrific tension' Marcel Berlins, THE TIMES

'Darkly woven with a shocking history of New York asylums, penitentiaries and plagues. THE DEADHOUSE conjures up a horrid past to solve a baffling murder' - Patricia Cornwell

Linda Fairstein was the Assistant DA of Manhattan's sex crimes unit before taking early retirement in 2002 to concentrate on her writing.

She divides her time between New York and Martha's Vineyard.

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